Weekend Getaway
By Brian Newsome
Copyright Brian Newsome 2011
Smashwords Edition
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“Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”
-Aristotle
Prologue
Sal Warner sat in his Toyota Camry in a cloud of blue fog. He’d indulged in a $20 Cohiba to celebrate the last of a series of jobs that would make him abundantly wealthy, at least by a former newsman’s standards. It was a cigar typically smoked in dimly lit bars with a fine scotch. For the sloven photographer, it was inhaled between bites on a 7-11 burrito and gulps off two cans of Mountain Dew. He’d never been a connoisseur of anything, except maybe camera gear.
His former co-workers tried to shame him for leaving the newspaper and going into this kind of work. He wished he could see their faces when he sent them all post cards from Bora Bora next month.
It was a little after 9 p.m. when a steel-blue Lexus pulled up to the garage, its xenon headlights casting a daytime white glow across the lavish sandstone home. It quietly slid inside, and a couple minutes later a light came on in the house’s back left corner.
That was Sal’s cue. He took a deep drag off the cigar and extinguished the rest in the greasy mush of his burrito, wrapping it up and shoving it onto the floorboard. He reached into the unzipped bag on the seat beside him and pulled out his Nikon D30 and a 300 lens, effortlessly connecting them in the dark.
He peered up and down the road before exiting the car and jogging across the street and into the hedges. The yard was xeriscaped and each step on the crushed rocks made a crunch that left him looking around in panic. Sal, when he established he’d aroused no neighbors, made his way around the side of the house just as the woman opened the blinds. They’d been home just minutes, but she’d already exchanged her black dress for red see-thru lingerie and a G-string. “My God,” he whispered. She turned over her shoulder, just long enough to see he was there. Beyond the bed and through an open bathroom door the man was gargling mouthwash, his paunch hanging over a pair of silk paisley boxers.
“Another one bites the dust,” Sal said, about the state senator.
Shooting into a dimly lit room without a flash was a photographer’s nightmare, but these shots weren’t exactly going to be 8-by-10 glossies in someone’s living room. The man’s face was discernable, and that’s what mattered.
The man walked over to the woman and began clumsily removing her lingerie as he lapped at her neck like a dog. The camera clicked furiously. Her face was expressionless, like an autistic kind of gaze. The man’s, on the other hand, was like a drug addicts’, with a fiendish disregard for anything but the anticipated high.
It was only minutes before the man was snoring, sweaty in a sex-induced stupor. The woman laid motionless, staring at the ceiling. Then, as if programmed by an internal clock, she got up and grabbed her clothes. Sal made his way back through the bushes to the car and waited for her.
She slid silently into the passenger seat, visibly disgusted as he slid the remainder of his burrito, doubling as an ashtray for his cigar, into the floorboard. They didn’t talk as he drove to the farmhouse as instructed.
At least I don’t screw strange men you whore, he wanted to tell her. At least I have self respect.
Then again, the latest photos on his flash card said otherwise.
After a half-hour drive into the Nevada desert, the Vegas lights finally disappearing into the moonless night, they arrived at an ailing farmhouse, tucked away on a winding dirt driveway off of Highway 95. At the front porch Sal stopped the car, and the girl got out. She walked into the house without a goodbye. He kept driving 300 yards down the drive to the barn, where he was told to go. A dust cloud danced in front of his headlights. Parked in front was a black Cadillac Escalade. Shards of light shot through the slats of the wood door of the barn.
As he turned off the ignition the door of the barn slid open at the hands of a towering man in a suit. Until now, Sal hadn’t considered who he was working for, or how someone could afford to pay him so much money.
A man the size of a pro linebacker standing in a barn has a way of creating unease, and he figured it was better to not know. He reached behind his seat until he could feel the camera, ejecting the memory card and sticking it in his inside coat pocket.
The car door squeaked in rusted agony, piercing the swallowing quiet of the desert as he got out. He nodded at the tall man. “How you doin?” The man looked down with disgust. Inside the barn were at least four more hulks, a steroid freak show. At a small folding table in the middle of the dirt floor was an unassuming man in tan linen pants and a pastel blue polo sucking a lollipop. His white hair was cropped close to the scalp. A pair of thin spectacles seemed to enlarge his almost unnatural cerulean eyes.
He stood and warmly took Sal’s hand. “Greetings, Mr. Warner,” he said in a thick accent. Russian, maybe German? Sal wouldn’t know Spanish from French. “All went well, no?”
Sal nodded. He smiled as he pulled the memory card from his pocket and handed it to the man, who had the ghostly appearance of an insomniac.
It was the first time to meet Maxwell Volner, a name being the only thing Sal knew about his employer. Volner held the card between his angular thumb and index finger and drew it close to his pale eyes, as if he were inspecting a jewel. He stuck it into a flashdrive attached to the laptop, and after a few whirs and quiet clicks some 300 thumbnail photos of the torrid evening at 1523 Sagewood popped up on the screen.
Volner’s papery lips parted in a smile. “Excellent work. And everything is properly labeled? Time, location?”
Sal nodded, trying not to grin too wide over the six-figures, tax-free, he was about to receive. His hands were sweating and he wiped them on his faded Levis. “He was the last of them, right?” Sal said, not knowing what else to offer.
Volner looked up. “Yes, of course.” He turned again to the photos, then paused. Sal was unaware he was shifting from foot-to-foot like a kid in line for a bathroom urinal. “Where are my manners? You want to get paid,” Volner said. He stood up and one of the other men came over to close up the laptop. Volner gestured to a wooden crate under a hanging rack of garden tools near a lawnmower. The photographer walked toward the box skeptically. It was dusty and looked like it hadn’t been touched in ages.
Volner was just steps behind him. “Go ahead, count it. I want to make sure every bill is there, my friend. $150,000 is a lot of money. It could easily be miscounted.”
Sal looked at him, wondering once again why he was being paid so much and knowing better than to ask. “One of those guys gonna help me out with this?” Sal flipped a thumb to the defensive line congregating near the door. Volner chuckled.
“I’m going to hit the road for awhile,” Sal offered. He wasn’t sure why, because he was quite sure they didn’t care. “ Just do my own thing, you know. A photo book of the American West. But if you ever need something else, just give me a call.”
“Of course,” Volner said. Sal turned and bent over to open the box. His heart raced. The most money he’d ever seen was in a suitcase the police had confiscated. They’d invited the press to plug their pride after a major drug bust. That was $45,000, and Sal remembered the strange feeling of seeing a year’s salary sitting in neat stacks. Now, he was about to see a trunk full, and could look at it as much as wanted. He could play with it in his hotel room, shuffling bills like a deck of cards.
The hinges creaked as the lid lurched open. His eyes had not fully adjusted their gaze on the darkness inside the box when the hollow dong sent an explosion through his skull and sent him collapsing face forward onto the crate and slamming the lid back down. He rolled off onto his back in a cloud of dust billowing from the dirt floor.
The starry flash in his eyes cleared just enough for him to see Volner, blurry and shapeless through the gritty cloud. His voice was echoey and metallic, like a blown speaker. “I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely honest with you, Mr. Warner.”Sal watched in numb confoundment as the shovel was thrust forward into his mouth and through his head.
Chapter 1
Rob Hollister’s head swirled with booze and orgasm as he leaned over to the nightstand, a relic of the 70s, and popped a purple pill known on the streets as a disco biscuit.
Candy’s back was turned as she fumbled through her purse for a cigarette. Rob swallowed, eager for the drug to melt into his bloodstream. He turned and ran his fingers down the snake tattoo that spiraled down Candy’s spine, still slick with sweat from their time in the sheets. She turned her head and flashed an impish smile as she flicked up a flame and put the end of her smoke to it. “That’ll be $250.”
“Put it on my tab,” he said, propping up on his elbows and chuckling.
There was a time eight months ago when he did, in fact, pay for her sex. Close to $2,000 in three months. It came before rent and food and damn near landed him on the streets. But, in a surprise of good fortune, her relationship with him evolved from just another prostitute to motel-room mistress. He wasn’t exactly sure what made her different than all the rest. Maybe it was her snide remarks that fenced in a hurting girl within, and how he seemed to let that little girl out with the pillow talk that followed.
At first, she lingered just a few minutes to talk about music or Hollywood gossip. Then, minutes became hours. Gossip became bedroom confessionals. She lingered so long sometimes that they would do it again, at no charge. The very word “fuck” became, on occasion, “making love.” Playfully, she began to refer to their evenings in orange-lit rooms as dates. Sometimes they just watched TV and ordered pizza. . Their companionship was built on a reckless abandon of two souls with nothing to live for but a few drug-filled trysts in filthy motel rooms in the shadows of Las Vegas neon, but it was old-fashioned companionship plain and simple.
They’d shared those guarded secrets reserved for naked intimacy. She’d told him how her father froze to death on St. Patrick’s Day after losing his way home from the bar in Minnesota. Rob was told how her family, middle-class and happy, had dissolved after his death. Her mom killed herself, and her sister ran away with a boyfriend at 16. Candy went to foster care for four years before running away too.
On Rob’s chest she’d reminisce about camping in Canada in a pop-up trailer her dad had refurbished. The family had had three dogs, and as a little girl she’d planned to go to college to be a veterinarian.
Rob, in exchange, told stories from the days at the University of Texas. He’d lived an easy life, and she seemed to live vicariously through his tales of upper middle-class normalcy.
Now, on this hot night with the air conditioner rattling and rambling on high, Rob grabbed her shoulder, the euphoria of the Ecstasy taking hold, “One more time, babe.”
She slid his hand from her shoulder. The smile gone.
“Roland’s getting suspicious,” she said as she gathered her clothes off the floor beside the bed.
“Fuck Roland,” Rob said. He grabbed the TV remote off the nightstand and tossed it against the wall, but they both knew it was an empty outburst.
“Tell that to Shawna.”
Rob didn’t have to be reminded. The woman’s breast was sliced open so bad the disfigurement cost her clients and a week in the hospital. Three weeks after she was discharged, Roland beat her for not getting repeat business in her deformed state.
“In a way, maybe she was lucky,” Candy said. “She’s legit now. I think she’s waitin’ tables at Denny’s.”
“Want me to pay this time,” Rob said, trying to contain his high and salvage one last round with her. “I will, if you think it will help.” He couldn’t afford it, of course, and she knew that. He couldn’t hold a job, and he was spending a few hundred a month on drugs.
“No.” She stared vacantly into the glowing ember of her Marlboro. “I’ll just work a few extra clients tonight.”
It made him sick. He tried to block the thought of some fat, hairy man on top of her, wheezing and sweating in delight. She never talked about the others, but he’d lived in Vegas long enough to know who they were. Traveling salesmen. Lonely card dealers, or the gamblers who could make a fortune at blackjack but couldn’t find the same luck with women. The women on the arms of wealthy Japanese businessmen didn’t work for pimps like Roland.
Candy’s body bore no signs of the wear and tear so many hookers’ did. Her blonde hair was natural, not fried by chemicals, and she kept it in a stylish flip. She stayed away from the gutter drugs like meth and crack, and she even exercised sometimes. Rob knew she was attractive enough to be a high-priced escort. In Vegas, though, like the honest world, it was all about who you knew. And she knew Roland.
He shifted to face her and reached around to play tenderly with her right breast before she covered it up with a sheet. “Don’t do that, babe. I’ll find some cash.”
She coughed an acerbic laugh, and he removed his hand.
“With what, Rob? You haven’t worked in weeks. What are you gonna do, rob a bank?”
“Sure.”
She rolled her eyes.
He went to climb on top of her but she pushed him back and slid out of bed. “No more tonight, babe. It’s going to be a long night and I don’t want to pull out the ice pack in the morning.”
He watched as she wiggled into her black leather pants and slid on her glittery purple tank top. The snake’s head peaked out the top with sympathetic eyes.
“We can’t keep going like this,” he said. “You gotta stop.”
“And what? You gonna tell Roland that? Take a good look at these tits, cuz you’d probably get them in a box – right before he killed you.”
“Why do you have to talk that way?”
“I’m not a bullshitter, Rob. I sell fantasy, I don’t live it.”
They left the Lucky Lady Motel at 9 p.m. He tried to hold her hand on the short walk to the parking lot but she didn’t take it. He opened the door of her weathered Suzuki Samari.
“You’re a good man, Rob,” she said. He didn’t realize it was such a strange thing to open a door for a woman.
Her car choked sadly into life on the third try and the creaks seemed a cry for mercy. He watched as the taillights shrank into tiny red twinkles and disappeared around the corner, off to whatever forsaken, depraved set of streets would pay another night’s bills.
Rob hopped in his truck, fumbled for a CD, grew frustrated and pounded the dash. The jeep, like her car, sputtered and coughed into life, and Rob drove away.
Neither of them noticed the dark figure across the parking lot watching from a lounger by a half-empty pool, his many rings sparkling in the light of the Coke machine. Roland hoped for her sake, the man in the pickup had paid. But, as he tossed his cigarette into the half-drained pool beside him, he knew better.
Chapter 2
Candy grimaced in the morning sun as she fumbled for her apartment keys. Her groin was on fire. Although the manifestation of a hard day’s work was far different for her than most women, the solution was the same: She was looking forward to a glass of wine and a warm bath.
She loathed being a prostitute. It was a means to an end, and she went to painstaking lengths to distance her personal life from her professional one. She lived far from the streets she walked. She was a working girl living among the working class. The suburban apartment was her sanity. Surrounding herself among accountants, administrative assistants, dental hygienists and the like made her feel a little bit more like someday she could be one of them. At times she wondered if such a life might be possible with Rob, but she quickly dismissed such thoughts. This was the hand she was dealt, and in Vegas, the house always wins.
The darkness of her apartment was disorienting as she entered. The extra Johns she’d taken on to make up for her unpaid time with Rob took her well into sunrise. She’d left the last one snoring comfortably on the lime-colored shag in the Paradise Motel, oblivious to the morning rays illuminating his limp and embarrassingly small penis in a beam of dust.
The windows of her apartment were laden with drapes heavy enough to block out as much as a faint glow of sunshine. A vampire could have resided there, and in a way, she felt like one. The difference: She wandered the streets at night for victims with fat wallets instead of jugulars. Both hookers and vampires had a way of leaving men helpless and unconscious in the end.
Today, though, she didn’t feel like sleeping. She didn’t want the darkness. Maybe it was the night with Rob, but there was some kind of hope that made her want to feel something for a change. She was looking forward to dragging them open and basking in the day’s warmth.
She set her keys on the plant stand by the door and played her messages, her eyes still trying to adjust to the night inside.
“Hey, it’s Rob. I had a great time last night, and I’m sorry I got pissy. I hope you didn’t work too hard. God, I really hope so... Look, I’m going to find a new job today. I don’t want you doing any more of this shit. If my entire paycheck pays goes right to you, that’s OK. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
She smiled. She knew his chivalrous pledge was meaningless, but it was still a sweet thing to say. Rob had good intentions, but he could never keep a job more than a few weeks. Despite his shortcomings, he had one thing she’d never found in a man. Genuine concern.
“Awww, isn’t that sweet,” a Spanish voice cut through the dark from somewhere within the room, mocking her.
Candy jumped, knocking the plant under the light switch to the floor.
“My little girl’s found the love of her life,” the voice said in a taunting falsetto voice. “Ohhhh, I love you so, so much, smooch, smooch, smooch.”
It was still too dark to see, but she didn’t need her eyes to identify the shape sitting on her sofa.
“What are you doing here, Roland,” she said in a defeated whisper.
“What? A daddy can’t pay a visit to his little girl.”
“Look, that guy, he’s nothing,” she said, wondering how much of Rob’s message he had heard. “He’s just in love with my pussy. I have all your money right here.” She shakily grabbed her purse off the table, the broken pot crunching under her heels. “I worked extra,” she said, pulling out a wad of bills. “You’ve got it all right here.”
“Somehow, I don’t think I do,” he said in his thick Latino accent.
“I promise, Roland, it’s right here. I’ve been fucking for 12 hours. It’s right here, alright?”
“So are you in love, my little princess? Is he your Prince Fuckin’ Charming?”
“I said he’s just in love with my –“
“I know what you said, bitch!” he screamed, springing up from the couch like someone possessed.
“Roland, please .”
The quick flash of his ring sliced through the darkness as his fist exploded against her cheek. The force threw her to the wall, her shoulder exploding in pain as it crushed a crater into the sheet rock. She peeled away from the fractured plaster and slumped to the floor. Before the tears could well in her eyes Roland’s alligator skin boot sank into her gut. She gasped as if drowning.
“Do I look like a game show host, bitch? Do you think I host the dating game!” he said, angry drool trickling off his chin and onto her breast. “You’re a whore not a beauty queen!”
He seethed with sarcasm. “I like walks on the beach and a man to sit by the fire with,” he said in that exaggerated female voice again.
As he walked to the kitchen, Candy focused on trying to take a breath. Somewhere beyond the ringing in her ears she heard the faucet. Roland returned and threw a splash of cold water on her before throwing the tumbler like a baseball above her head. The shards showered her.
Grabbing her throbbing shoulders, he lifted her to her feet and tossed her effortlessly into the living room across the coffee table, the scented candles jabbing her ribs as the table fell sideways with her.
He ripped open her pants and shook her violently until they wiggled off.
She bit her lip, sure she was about to be raped. Instead, a pain exploded in her right thigh and she screamed, eyes bulging. Roland, kneeling with all his weight on her legs, was carving it with a razor.
“This is to remind you what you are!” he said. Roland Gonzales scribbled “whore” into the taut flesh of her leg. Halfway through, the blackness of unconsciousness graciously overtook her.
Chapter 3
Jack Skinner’s eyes shifted back and forth between the road ahead and the misshapen front right corner of his car. The angry folds of metal were losing peels of paint to the wind. He was late for work and only able to drive 25 mph. The steering wheel seemed to shake violently, and he had to fight to keep it from veering sharply to the right.
His Infiniti G35 was a car that, until an hour ago, had made it nearly 4 years without a door ding. That was four years of disciplined parking. Four years of braving the Colorado cold to plod across vast pavement from the remote reaches of parking lots, and trolling for end spaces that would put a safe enough buffer between the widest of car doors or the most careless of kids.
All lost in a moment to a high school kid who was texting on a cell phone while eating a breakfast burrito. He cruised right through a stop sign before Jack had even made it out of the neighborhood. “Yo, dude, I am so sorry,” the boy had said, his jeans barely hanging on his hips and four earrings in one ear. “I have a job at Taco Bell. I’ll send you some cash.”
The kid got a $100 fine. Jack got a $1,000 deductible.
Now the car limped along Interstate 25, hazards on, drivers speeding buy and shooting angry looks. The Denver skyline was painfully far away, but close enough for Jack to see Friedman Tower, where he should have been working through his second cup of coffee by now. The stock market’s opening bell was 45 minutes ago, and Jack could only speculate how much crap was soon to be shoveled his way.
There was a time not too long ago where a fender bender might not have been so bad. But 4-month-old Maddie had thrown a wrench into the family budget. Not only was there the baby gear, the breast pump, the diapers, and the nursery, but Alexia had decided after a month of maternity leave to quit her job.
The result: A canceled his gym membership, downgraded Internet service, brown bag lunches and cheap coffee.
At the office, Jack offered none of the usual hellos. He poured a cup of coffee, by this time a burnt concoction at the bottom of the pot that had already started to cool. He settled into his chair and sighed as he put on his headset. Before his computer had booted, Dick Evans, his boss, was looming over him.
“What the hell, Jack? The market is already down 75 points. People are screaming to sell, freaked out about the African protests. Where have you been?”
For a fleeting moment Jack considered rehashing the ordeal, but somehow he just didn’t have the fight.
“A fender bender. I’m really sorry.”
Evans, a spindly man who lost his hair to the 2008 recession, rolled his eyes and walked away. “Sorry about your car,” he muttered, “but next time call.”
The phone rang, and Jack readied himself. Lifting the phone off the cradle and pushing the button on the headset, he put his game face on. “Austin Epstein Financial, this is Jack.”
“What in the hell are you doing with my money, Jack?” It was Will Reed, a wealthy client who owned a chain of novelty burger joints across the Front Range.
Jack adjusted his headset and rocked back in his chair, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to keep his composure. Will Reed was the last person he wanted to hear from on a day already off to a sputtering start. The man had been Jack’s client for years, all of which ignoring Jack’s financial advice. The man insisted on an aggressive portfolio despite a complete lack of risk tolerance. “Let it ride,” he would say with a phlegm-filled cackle, mocking the idea of diversification. Then, when the market took a dive or those soy-bean futures didn’t pan out as expected, he would call up and proceed almost methodically with his list of expletives. His investments were volatile in the best of times, despite Jack’s advice. Now, with the bear market, they were in a nosedive.
Will Reed, Jack had come to believe, was an albatross. Jack sold himself out when he gave up on his real love, graphic design, for the stable and more lucrative world of finance. Jack was convinced Reed was placed on the earth as a reminder that Jack was a sell out.
They’d only met in person a few times over the years, but it was more than enough for Jack to picture the man’s red, oily hair combed over to hide a sun-baked bald spot, and his tobacco-stained skin, creased and cracked like dry leather. Jack pictured him in a $100 shirt with a ketchup stain, just as he’d worn at their last lunch meeting a year ago.
In Jack’s 8-by-8 piece of Denver’s top financial firm – one of 70 cubicles lining the north side of the 18th floor of Denver’s Ferrington Tower – a collage of Maddie and Alexia photos were plastered on cork board with multi-colored push pins. It was strange how part of him looked on their beautiful smiles with an indescribable love, while another side of him saw them as shackles, confining him to his chair, the mortgage, and the screaming idiot on the other end of the phone.
“You son-of-a-bitch. What do they pay you for over there, anyway, you dipshit.”
Jack wanted to remind him that he should really stop makingrash business decisions based on headlines found on Google, but he refrained.
Above the stapler on Jack’s desk, Alexia lounged on the sun deck of the Crown Princess from their last childless vacation in November.The love they made on the balcony somewhere between St. Thomas and Grenada, the way he could taste the margarita salt on her tongue as he pulled aside her clammy swimsuit, all seemed so long ago.
“Jack, you asshole, are you listening to me?”
Jack shifted his attention to his monitor. “Yes, Will. What would you like me to say?”
“Say? What the fuck can you say after blowing $45,000?”
“Will, with all due respect, the market is not about making money right now. It’s about losing less of it.”
“Don’t due respect me, you dick. I don’t want not as bad. You think Warren Buffet got where he was by being not as bad?”
Do think Warren Buffet was a moron like yourself, Jack wanted to say.
Jack wanted Alexia on the boat. He wanted more than five hours of sleep. He wanted to talk to people who didn’t call him names. He wanted to knock back a few beers without having to stop and heat a bottle for the baby.
And the thought of not getting this made him want to throw his keyboard.
“And, what is going on with Cybertronics, Jack? It was 75 percent last year and now I’m losing my shirt. How do you explain that?”
Enough.
“I’ll tell you how, Will,” Jack said, raising his voice and boring a hole into his monitor with his eyes. “The CEO of Cybertronics is now in prison. The company’s growth strategy was built on the absurd idea of outperforming Apple – by spying and fraud. I would have refused to make that trade, had my boss not read me the riot act on customer service.” When Will didn’t interrupt, he continued. “Now, listen up and listen good, asshole: You can start taking my advice and letting me make you as much money as this firm seems to believe I can, or you can find someone else to call a, quote,‘fuckin asshole.’”
In the cubicle behind Jack, Bernie Topin reclined in his chair just far enough to look at Jack with wide-eyes. “Are you crazy?” he mouthed.
It was understandable. Calls were randomly recorded for customer service. No one knew how many calls – perhaps one in ten based on how often they were evaluated – but Jack was pretty sure that calling your client ignorant and an asshole was a fireable offense if this was one of those recorded calls. Even if the call was not recorded, he would not deny it if Will cried foul. Jack wasn’t good at lying.
Truthfully, he didn’t care. There was something about the morning that made him feel as if all reality was melting away. What was happening? Could men get post-partum depression? He didn’t think so, but something felt strangely reckless.
Then, in the silence that hung on the line, it occurred to him that he might lose his job with a three-month old at home and an unemployed wife.Staring into the blackness of the stale coffee he felt sick.
“Will, I’m really sorry about that outburst but – “
“Look, Jack. Maybe you’re right. I don’t have to call you names. But, fuck, I’m getting killed here. I have a right to be pissed.”
“You’re not getting killed,” Jack mumbled, trying not to let his voice crack with fear. “You’re doing quite well, Will. And you’ll do even better if you just get out of my way and let me do what I’m trained to do.”
“Alright, hot shot. Do your thing. But don’t make me come kick your ass six months from now.”
Jack closed his eyes. If this call was not recorded, miraculously he might work another day.
“Agreed. Have a nice day, Will.”
“Yeah, later.”
Jack poured out the cold coffee into his trash can and stared vacantly at the tickers zipping across his screen.
“WTF?” Bernie asked, leaning around his cubicle. He was a Nebraska Huskers linebacker turned financial planner who, unlike Jack, saw every phone call as a chance to make millions with the right kind of schmoozing. He’d come to view every transaction as a quarterback waiting to be sacked. And although he was a far cry from a millionaire, it didn’t stop him from living like it, with $200 haircuts and suits four times that. “You’re gonna get yourself fired, dude.”
“He doesn’t understand professionalism,” Jack said in an unconvincing defense. He knew he was way out of line and that Bernie was right.
“Whatever, man. You better hope that call wasn’t monitored. Seriously, what were you thinking?”
Jack shrugged and didn’t respond, but he knew exactly what he was thinking. I need a vacation.
Chapter 4
A small part of Rob wondered if Candy had just dumped him. It wasn’t like her to avoid his calls. Sometimes she’d even text him while in bed with another man, typing away as some while the sweaty slob snored beside her. To suddenly severe contact meant she’d either had enough of him ... or something much worse. After their last conversation, he suspected the latter. She seemed scared. And for a woman who made a living going into dark places with strange men, fear was a foreign emotion.
Rob wanted to check on her, but he’d never been to her place, and he sometimes wondered if she even had one. Sadly, as much as he’d finally come to understand that he loved her, he didn’t even know her last name.
Candy’s friends would never give a home address to a John. Hell, they probably didn’t know where she lived either. The prostitutes lived by their cells. Safety was text messaging.
Staring into his bowl he remembered Shawna, the one Roland had roughed up. He decided to go to Denny’s in hopes that she was on shift.
The hostess eyed him skeptically when he asked for a table in Shawna’s section. He picked up on it and said he was a friend. She seemed unconvinced, but seated him in one of her booths.
Shawna looked down when she talked, probably from a lifetime of submission to violent men. She poured him some coffee and handed him a menu, and he noticed she did so with an awkward effort to conceal her chest.
She was a heavy black woman with orange-tinted hair and cheap-smelling perfume.
“Are you a friend of Candy?” he asked.
She looked up at the sound of Candy’s name, a flicker of a smile. It disappeared when she remembered he was a stranger. “We friends,” she said, “but we ain’t talked in awhile.”
A manager eyed her suspiciously. Rob noticed, so he looked at the menu as he talked, as if he was discussing what to order. “I’m her boyfriend. I know what Roland did to you. I’m very sorry.”
Her eyes iced over. “Ain’t none of yor business.”
“I think it is,” he said. “I’m worried about Candy. I think he suspects something.”
She hardened. Rob didn’t have to tell her what that something was. She knew. Candy had been offering freebies.
“Boy, why caint you just pay like the rest of ‘em. You any idea who Roland’s messed up with? She should know better.”
Rob thought about what Candy had said: I sell fantasy. I don’t live it.
“Can you tell me where she lives? If you can’t, understand. Just please go check on her for me.”
The manager shot another glare in her direction.
“What can I get you.”
“An omelette, I guess. I don’t care what kind.”
Shawna walked off.
Rob watched the steam rise from his coffee. This was a dead end, except now he was more worried than before.
When Shawna came back she set down silverware wrapped in a paper napkin and pointed to it with her eyes. As Rob unrolled it, he found an address.
“I don’t know if she still there.” She walked to the table behind him, where a hungover couple had just sat down. “What can I get you folks?”
Taking out a $10, the last one in his wallet, he left it on the table and walked out, wondering if he’d somehow fucked up the best thing that ever happened to him.
Chapter 5
Maddie was asleep in Alexia’s arms when Jack walked in. The traffic had been better coming home, but it had been a hell of day and he was exhausted. He spent his lunch break on the phone with the insurance company, tow truck guy and rental car agency. His Audi now sat in a body shop parking lot, and his commute home had been considerably less comfortable in the Kia compact he’d been given.
Jack took Maddie delicately and whispered to her. “There’s my girl.” He closed his eyes and relished her frailty. Funny how a single moment made the rest of the day seem somehow OK.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Alexia said, “can I have one of those.” He shifted Maddie into the nook of his left arm and drew Alexia into his right and kissed her forehead. He could smell her cucumber-and-melon shampoo.
“I apologize in advance,” she said, “but we’re having Hamburger Helper for dinner. Maddie didn’t sleep a wink today. It was all I could do to set out the hamburger to thaw.”
“That’s fine, hon. I lived on the stuff for the first half of my adult life, so what’s one more night, right?”
“How was you’re day?” Alexia asked as she walked into the kitchen to man the skillet. She wore a pair of khakis and a baby blue halter and had lost her pregnancy weight surprisingly fast. He ached for her and wondered how long it would be until they could resume a normal sex life again.
“It was fine, I suppose. I had my usual go round with Will Reed, the hamburger guy, this morning. That guy is such a prick.” He followed her into the kitchen, Maddie in his arm.
Alexia ripped open a packet of cheese powder and poured it into the milk-watery beef mixture.
“Sorry to hear that, babe. And the car?”
“Yeah, called insurance. The rental is a go-kart, but it’ll do.”
She smiled.
“Dinner won’t be long. Why don’t you put Maddie in her crib while we eat and get cleaned up?”
Upstairs, he laid the baby down and pulled her Winnie the Pooh curtains closed against the evening sun.
As he came downstairs, Alexia was taking the skillet off the burner to cool and Jack squeezed her shoulders. He pulled back her long brown hair gave her a peck on the neck.
“I love you,” he said.
“You too, sweetheart. Dinner is ready if you want to get our plates. Use the plastic ones so I’ll have an easy clean-up.”
He retrieved the plates. Maybe the day was salvageable. He and Alexia could have a nice dinner - the Betty Crocker entrée notwithstanding - and maybe watch a movie.
Before the first bite, the arc of lights on the downstairs monitor fired up, accompanied by the static-filled scream.
“I swear,” Alexia said with a chuckle, “that little booger has a sixth sense when it comes to meal time. I’ll go feed her. Why don’t you go ahead and get started.”
It was back. That fist-clenching frustration. Jack soaked a piece of bread in his cheeseburger macaroni. ]Is it too much to ask for a couple of hours with my wife?
Alexia could be heard over the monitor humming to Maddie as she breastfed.
Jack finished his food and retreated for the study. He logged into Facebook and scrolled through the usual assortment of mindless posts: friends trying to be clever, links to sites he had no interest in, and an array of updates about what people had eaten for dinner. A few posts down, though, a photo caught his eye. It was Rob Hollister, his old college roommate, doing a shot. It read, “So wasted!!!”
Rob and Jack had been inseparable at the University of Texas, but it was a bond built on boozing and chasing chicks. Their lives took divergent paths. Jack got serious with Alexia their senior year and put aside partying to focus on landing a job. Rob, instead, scoffed at the thought. The day after graduation, he loaded up his few belongings in the back of his truck and took off for Vegas.
Staring at the photo, Jack was somewhat amazed that Rob, now in his thirties, had managed to stay at it all this time. Jack considered his last bender, a few too many martinis as the office Christmas party, and how much worse the hangover was with age.
That wasn’t the only thing to cross Jack’s mind. A weekend in Vegas sounded like just the kind of thing to snap him out of the baby blues and help him forget about his poor car.
Of course, it was paying for the poor car that made the idea of spending money on a vacation seem completely ridiculous. Alexia would never go for it.
“Jack!” Alexia called from upstairs. “Can you bring me a burp towel. Maddie spit up all over me.”
“Be right there!” He realized this was the end of his evening. It was back to baby duty for the night. Before he logged off, though, Jack sent Rob an e-mail: Thinking about a visit. You game?
He’d figure out how to pay for it later.
Chapter 6
Rob was surprised to discover Candy’s apartment was nowhere near the red light district. It was, at least to him, a luxury complex in the city’s northern suburbs. A sprawling clubhouse sat tucked among hundreds of lilacs and exotic-looking shrubbery and a fountain cascading over rocks into a pond, complete with lily pads. Three flagpoles towered in front like it was some kind of embassy.
So this was her escape, he thought. This is where she came to feel whole again. He suspected she was the only prostitute who lived here. She probably quietly resided among young professionals like accountants, nurses, and maybe even lawyers. Then again, this was Vegas. Money was seldom earned honest in this town.
Candy no doubt sacrificed to be here. But even a few late, perhaps brutally sore nights was worth a few hours of normalcy, he figured.
There were at least 15 three-story buildings sprawled across acres of pavement behind a sage painted gate with copper points. It could take all day to find her. He looked at her apartment number on the napkin, damp with sweat as he clinched it: 12203.
His own standard of living, unlike this, was exactly the kind of place you’d expect a working girl to reside. He lived in a converted motel near the Stratosphere. Each night he fell asleep to a cacophony of gunshots, arguments and base-thumping low riders.
He pulled his pickup into the clubhouse parking lot, waiting for someone to enter the gate so he could follow them through -- and hoping they wouldn’t call the cops in the process.
After a few minutes a newer model Acura pulled into the parking lot. A neatly dressed man entered the clubhouse. Rob wondered if the man was a new divorcee in search of his doghouse. A few minutes later, the man re-emerged with a middle-aged, but attractive blonde in a charcoal business suit. She handed him some brochures and seemed to be delivering her sales pitch as they walked to a golf cart parked near the front doors. The saleswoman hopped behind the steering wheel and drove to the front gate, where she punched in a code. As it lurched open, Rob thought about following them in, but his ‘87 truck, eaten away with rust, seemed sorely out of place. He decided to wait on a car to follow instead.
It seemed like hours before a Jeep Cherokee pulled up and the gate opened. His truck belched smoke as he started it up, and he hoped it wouldn’t be too obvious as he pulled it behind it and went through. The buildings were numbered. Toward the back of the complex he found 12 and guessed this was probably Candy’s. The golf cart was parked three buildings down at building 9. He parked his truck around the corner, hoping the woman in the pant suit wouldn’t see it on the way back and become suspicious.
The first apartment Rob came two was 12103, then 12104 across the hall. He looked at the napkin again, 12203. That must be upstairs, he thought. His pace quickened. Until now, he didn’t realize just how fearful for her he was.
A Tweety Bird welcome mat sat below Candy’s door. Don’t Twead on Me.
“Candy, it’s Rob,” he said as he knocked. “Sorry I showed up at your place. I was worried after – “
A neighbor came out from across the hall. He smiled and she smiled back, if a bit cautiously. “Excuse me, have you seen my friend Candy? I haven’t heard from her in a couple of days and it’s kind of unlike her.”
The woman, wearing a dealer uniform and a Bellagio name badge, shook her head. “Sorry, I never see her. I met her when she moved in, but that was it. We must work different shifts.”
“No problem,” Rob said, trying to avoid involving her any further. “I’m kind of a worry wart. I’ll just leave her a note or something.”
“I’ve got a pen and paper inside, if you need it.”
“No, I’ve got a notepad in my car. Thank you.”
She nodded and walked downstairs.
Rob watched the neighbor get in her car and pull away, then he knocked again. “C’mon, Candy. I’m really worried. If you don’t want to see me, it’s no big deal. I just want to know you’re OK.”
He decided she wasn’t home and turned to walk away when a quivering voice answered: “Go away, Rob. Please, just go away.”
Relief swept over him. Although he had told himself she was fine, somewhere deep inside he feared her lying dead in a pool of blood or a pile of pills.
“Candy, please, just let me in. I won’t stay long. I just want to see you’re alright.”
He waited in the breezeway.
“So this it,” he mumbled to himself. “This is what you get for loving a whore.”
He started toward the stairs when the tumble lock clicked and the door cracked open. He turned. The door was cracked. Candy didn’t come outside, so he nudged the door and went in.
“Candy?”
He was momentarily blinded stepping from the bright afternoon sun into the darkness. His foot crunched on a broken vase in the entry. He ran his hand along the walls looking for a switch and felt his fingers sink into a powdery indentation in the drywall.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Candy – what happened?”
“Why are you here, Rob?”
“I haven’t heard from you in two –“
“Damn it, Rob! Why can’t you just GO AWAY!”
As his eyes adjusted he noticed the upturned coffee table and shards surrounding his feet. He looked to the right of the hole in the drywall and saw a switchplate and flipped on the lights. They illuminated the string of upturned and broken furniture.
“My God. What happened?”
Then he noticed Candy was crumpled at the foot of her sofa; she shielded her face as if it the lightbulbs were shooting acid.
“I told you not to –“ she said before breaking into uncontrollable sobs.
The carpet was stiff with dried blood that had crawled from beneath her.
“Oh, Candy,” he said running to her and wrapping her in his arms. She shoved him away with a moan.
“Don’t touch me!” she seethed. “This is all your fault! Why couldn’t you just pay me like the rest of ‘em!” She began to hyperventilate and Rob grabbed her again. Her push was weaker now. Her palms grabbed handfuls of fabric from his shirt and she buried her head in his chest. It was then he saw it, scrawled in blood on her thigh: Whore. He vomited into his mouth and swallowed it with a wince.
“It’s OK, honey, it’s OK,” he said, not at all believing it.
After she stopped crying Candy sat motionless in Rob’s arms for half an hour, neither of them saying a word. Rob wanted to look down at her thigh, but he didn’t want her to see him staring.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said. She was petite, and he hefted her to her feet with little effort. Her left eye was swollen shut and both cheeks were bruised. Rob assumed the collar bone was fractured from the contorted and swollen shoulder. Her stomach was bruised and a bloody clump matted her hair.
Rob made Candy stay in the living room while he could heat her bath water, making sure the steam had fogged the mirror before she entered. She tried to wipe it away as she passed, but he steered her away. “Not now,” he said. “And don’t worry, it’s nothing permanent.”
He did the best he could to clean up her wounds, but he was no expert at first-aid. Was it heat or something cold her eye needed? What do you put on the cut?
She screamed when the hot water touched her cut leg, but it gave way to fatigue as she lay her head back.
“We’re going to get through this,” he said.
She kept her eyes closed and responded lethargically. “There’s no we, Rob. This was a warning. I don’t particularly like the life I’ve made, and I’ll hate it even more without you, but I don’t want to die.”
“Do you love me, Candy?” He said this as he sponged her body and suppressed a heat behind his eyes.
“When you fuck for a living, love is really part of the equation.. But say I did, Rob. What would it matter? I’m not into this whole Romeo and Juliet in-life-and-death business.”
She adjusted herself and grimaced as she shifted her leg. The fog in her head was clearing. “He really did a number on me, huh?”
“Yeah. Yeah he did. But we’ll get you to a hospital and get you fixed up.”
“There’s that we again. Give me some time in the tub and I’ll drive myself to a doctor. He could still be out there watching my apartment.”
All Rob wanted was Candy. He didn’t care about the motels or the bills. He just wanted to be with her, and even that was too much to ask.
Then his eyes darkened.
Candy seemed to sense the change in him. She opened her eyes, as much as she could at least, to gauge Rob’s expression. His eyes were red with tears and his jaw was clinched. She’d never seen a man so emotional.
“I could use some whiskey,” she said.
He brought her a bottle of Jack and sat on the edge of the tub. She drank it like a Gatorade. He took it from her and downed a couple of shots himself.
“I’m not giving up on you that easy,” he said, wiping his mouth. “I’m going to get us out of this mess if I have to rob a bank, kill that son of bitch Roland, or worse. I don’t care what kind of shit mistakes we’ve made before, we don’t have to live like this.”
Candy turned to her side and looked down at the degrading label carved into her taut thigh like a scarlet letter. “OK.”
Chapter 7
Rob smoked a joint and nursed a screwdriver on his sofa as he Googled ways to get away with murder. That bastard Roland would pay for what he’d done to Candy. He’d spent hours mulling over ways to rob the son of bitch and escape their God forsaken shithole for a new life. She’d suggested Florida, and that sounded alright to him. Miami, he’d heard, was a kick-ass city. If the take wasn’t enough to live on, he assumed he’d easily find a job in construction, if for no other reason than being a legal US resident. But everything he’d found online so far pointed to one thing: In a day of CSI like forensics, it was damn hard to cap someone and walk, even a low life. He needed a way to bundle this up in a way that the cops could file a report and be content to return to the donut shop after a fine day’s work. In essence, he needed a scapegoat.
Rob took a break from his research to log onto Facebook, where he saw he had a new message. It surprised him, because he had few friends and never took the time to post anything. He wasn’t even quite sure why he was on there, other than it seemed an obligatory ritual for anyone with a computer.
Jack Skinner?
Rob hadn’t heard from him in at least five years, and with not as much of a slight regret. That bastard had all but flipped him off when he started dating Alexia, as if he were too good for his old roommate. Jack had gone all corporate big shot, looking down on Rob as if he were leprous. The last he’d heard, Jack was some big shot broker in Denver with a fancy car and obscene house.
What the hell do you want, asshole, he thought as he opened the e-mail:
Rob,
How are you? Well, I hope. It’s been a long time. I was thinking I might come for a visit. Work’s been a bitch lately, and family life is a big chaotic. I could use a break, and I thought it could be fun to come out and see you. We could tear up the town like we used to back at UT. What do you think? Let me know.
Jack
Rob stared in disbelief. Did this joker actually think they were still friends? It was typical of the Jack he remembered senior year. Use your friends at your convenience, when it doesn’t get in the way of your job or your bitch.
Rob gulped down his screwdriver and took a drag, coughing and waving the haze away from his face.
He hit reply, trying to formulate just how to best deliver the message, go fuck yourself. He pounded out a diatribe of hate and was about to hit send, when the thought pierced his drug-clouded mind like a divine revelation. A scapegoat.
Rob pounded the delete key until every expletive and venomous verb was gone, leaving a white display. Then, he typed again:
Jack! Great to hear from you buddy. Sorry to hear life is getting you down. Would love to have you come out! Just send me your flight info and I’ll get you from the airport. We’ll party.
Rob.
Rob hit send and smiled. He dug through the pile of dirty clothes on his coffee table until he found his cordless phone, and called Candy.
“Good news, baby,” he said when she answered, not bothering with hellos. “We’re getting out of here. C’mon over and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Chapter 8
The tram zipped through the yellow-lit tunnel that connects terminal A and terminal C at Denver International Airport. The car swayed hypnotically and Jack watched the rhythmic flashes of girders and concrete go by. Alexia believed he was on a different tram going to a different terminal going to a different gate and different flight. In two hours, as far as she knew, he’d be sitting bored in an Albuquerque hotel room watching “Flip that House” on A&E. He’d never lied to her in 14 years of marriage, then launched right into one of the biggest lies he could imagine. The moment he put the airfare to Vegas on his Visa, he planned to tell her, but there was something embarrassing, if not emasculating, about needing a “time out” from your life. Now, with the lie in play, it made him sick.
It was Friday and the tram was full. An elderly couple stood beside him, apparently destined for someplace tropical. The man wore dark socks with Tommy Bahama shorts, a pair of deck shoes and a Bermuda shirt. The woman’s straw hat was just slightly smaller than a sombrero. A sloven college student with a faded backpack full of metal band patches and an iPod stood uncomfortably next to a man in a business suit, who was yammering into his cell phone in a booming New Yorker voice about the terms of a settlement. It made Jack all too aware of his own business attire, navy slacks and a golf shirt, expensive threads to complete his deceit.
It wasn’t too late to call her from the gate and explain. She’d be, at the least, upset that he lied and furious about the $175 non-refundable ticket, but he assumed she’d also appreciate the confession. Maybe she’d forgive him, understanding the pressure he’s been under and say “Have a good time.” That was delusional, of course, but it didn’t make the call any less important.
Hell, why wait, Jack told himself. He pulled his cell from his coat pocket and the college student rolled his eyes. He flipped it open and smiled at the photo of Maddie, in her stocking cap the hospital gave her when they went home.
The phone rang until voicemail picked up. “Hi, it’s Alexia. Leave a message.”
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