Niklas
I rap my knuckles on the door, and wait; there’s not much to look at while I wait, but I look, nonetheless. A small patch of grass, not much bigger than a carpet sample, sits beside the bottom step; it’s such an out-of-place thing, surrounded by dirt and bits of gravel and glass from the driveway. Tons of potholes look like landmines—the whole fucking trailer park is one giant fucking pothole. And I smell shit. Everywhere. I look down and turn my left foot sideways to check the bottom of my boot, then the right, relieved I didn’t step in any on my way up the dirt-and-brick sidewalk. But there are piles of shit spread across the yard—I’m surprised that small patch of grass was left untouched. Cats. They’re everywhere, too; I feel like they’re just waiting for the right moment to ambush me.
I knock on the door again, with more urgency this time.
Jackie, my friend and fuck-buddy—unlike Nora, who I really can’t stand—opens the door, and her face lights up when she sees me.
“Niklas!” She comes toward me, arms out at her sides, and hugs the hell out of me; I pat her awkwardly on the back, not being much the hugging type.
“Come in,” she urges, motioning for me.
I put up my hand. “I like you and all, but if there’s sixty cats in there, or you have some kind of hoarding problem, I’d rather just stand out here.”
She rolls her eyes, grabs my elbow, and drags me into her matchbox trailer, which turns out to be clean, despite the neighborhood.
“The cats aren’t mine,” she says, heading into the kitchen in full-view of the living room. “They’re kinda everybody’s around here, I guess. But they started with the lady in lot three—two cats became sixty; you get the picture.”
“Why do they shit all over the place? I thought cats were supposed to be clean?”
“They’re wild,” she says, taking two bottled beers from the fridge. “And inbred.”
“Oh.” I shrug, drop the cat topic, and go back to what I was thinking as I stood outside, before I felt two hundred eyes at my back. “So, this is where you, live, huh?” My eyes scan the tiny trailer, the old beat-up sofa and maroon recliner and twenty-eight-inch flat-screen television; a stack of DVDs sit on the ugly brown carpet beside it.
“Yeah, this is my place,” she says, waving her hand about the room before giving me the beer. “Something wrong with it? You got that judgmental look, babe.”
I take the beer. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” I tell her, and take a swig. “It’s just that I figured fifty-thousand dollars would help you out.” I gave her the money not long ago, after the Francesca Moretti case in Italy.
She smiles, takes a sip.
I follow and sit down with her on the sofa.
“It did help me,” she says. “I paid off a lot of debt. And I bought that car out there; it’s nothing fancy, but it’s dependable. I paid a year in advance rent on this place—I don’t have to worry about rent for a while. That’s always good.”
“But you could’ve bought a place,” I point out; I look around the small area again. “You could’ve bought five or six of these.”
She shrugs. “I had a lot of debt.”
Hmm…
There’s a knock at the door; Jackie sets her beer on the coffee table and goes to answer it just a few feet away. She steps halfway outside, her fingers curled around the door holding it open behind her. I hear faint voices, but only bits and pieces of the exchange.
“This isn’t a good time, Shell,” Jackie whispers, pauses to let ‘Shell’ speak, and then adds: “No, you’ll have to come back later. Yeah, I can get you a cigarette. Hold on.”
Jackie closes the door all the way, and while I pretend to be interested in my fingernails—or lack thereof—she grabs a cigarette from a pack on the kitchen table and takes it outside to the woman.
Drug debt, I answer myself. Why else would a woman who sleeps with men she hardly knows, and who hangs out at sleazy bars every night, and lives in a trailer park in the worst part of town, spend fifty-thousand dollars on anything else other than drugs? I knew she had a drug problem the day I met her—she was doing a line of coke on the bar behind the bartender’s back that night—so, I guess I can’t expect anything else from her. It’s none of my business, anyway. She can do all the drugs she wants, screw whoever she wants, and I’d never think less of her for being who she is. It just surprises me, is all; I had hoped she’d appreciate that money a little more, and do something with it to better her life.
Can’t change a leopard’s spots, and all that. It’s a shame, really, because she’s actually a beautiful woman.
“Sorry about that,” she says, sitting beside me again. “Shellie is kinda nosey; probably saw your classic Mustang out there and wanted to know who’s driving it. Strange, nice cars parked around here has sort of become the big news topic of the trailer park. Probably cops gettin’ ready to raid Carson’s place. He lives in lot twelve; I think he’s running a meth lab over there—so, what’d you want to talk with me about?” She grins, and scoots closer, putting her hand on my thigh. “Probably a stupid question, huh?” She bats her brown eyes.
“Actually, that’s not what I came here about,” I tell her.
A little surprised, Jackie slides her hand from my leg and looks at me with curiosity.
I take another drink, pull a cigarette from my pocket, pop it between my lips and set the end aflame.
This is probably a bad idea—I know it’s a bad idea—but I’m not known for my good ideas, or my good decisions, or—leopard’s spots and all that.
“If you’re interested,” I begin, and take another drag, “I’ve got a job for you.”
“What kind of job?”
“A hard one,” I say, smoke streaming from my mouth. “And I won’t lie to you, or sugarcoat anything—it’s dangerous. But it pays well, and you won’t have to do it alone; if it’s any consolation, I’m pretty sure you’ll be fine, but I’m not so sure you can stomach the things you might see being done to other people.”
Her eyebrows harden, and she cocks her head to one side. “Hmm,” she says. “I don’t know, Niklas, you’re not selling me very well. Is there anything about this dangerous, possibly traumatizing job that would make it more…tempting?”
“One million dollars,” I say, and she blinks. “And all of it up-front; none of that half before, half after shit.”
She puts her beer down, stunned, almost missing the table entirely.
“Wow…well, that’s a lot of money”—she’s having trouble finding the right words—“I mean, that’s a good and a bad thing: good, because it’s a lot of damn money; bad, because it means this job, whatever it is, really is dangerous. And you’re willing to give it all up-front? That concerns me even more. So, stop with the suspense already and tell me what it is.”
I spend an hour explaining everything: the dangers of the job and her role in it; the shit she’ll see no matter how hard she tries to avoid it; and by the time I’m done, not even a million dollars can convince her one-hundred-percent. We’re still at around, oh, I’d say, seventy-four.
“Holy shit, Nik,” she says, standing in the room with her arms crossed; she’s been pacing the past fifteen minutes. “I knew—I mean I figured, anyway—you were into some weird stuff; that fifty-thousand you gave me, I always thought it was some kind of blood-money, and I wondered where you got it. I don’t know, I guess I just never expected anything like this.”
“Well, what did you expect?” I’m sitting kicked-back on the sofa, my left boot propped on my right knee.
“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head, pacing a trench in the carpet. “I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I knew you were into some bad stuff, but actually hearing all of this, knowing what you want me to do, it makes it all so…real.”
“Yeah,” I say, “you probably would’ve been better off just imagining what kind of shit I get myself into.”
“Yeah. Probably.”
She stops pacing, and turns to face me.
“But I’ll do it.”
“Huh?” Surprised, I just look at her a moment; I’d convinced myself at seventy-four-percent she would slide back to zero. “So, you’re—”
“Saying yes,” she interrupts. “I don’t care how dangerous it is; with that kind of money”—she pauses, looking downward, probably imagining herself bathing in it and all the drugs she can buy—“I’ll definitely do it. I’d be an idiot to pass up an opportunity like this. Somebody like me: thirty-two-years-old, fresh out of rehab, no self-respect, no talent I know of, unless you want to count my acting, but since it wasn’t good enough for Hollywood, I suppose it counts as not having talent. Where the hell else am I ever going to get even half that amount of money?”
She kinda has a point, but I’d feel bad openly agreeing with her, so I say nothing.
“The acting,” I say instead, “will come in handy, that’s for sure. And fuck Hollywood—they sign shit-actors every day, so their opinions of your talent are invalid.” At least I hope so, for her sake—going into this, she better be able to channel Charlize Theron.
She blushes, as if she’s needed to hear someone say that since the day Hollywood turned her away.
She sits down next to me again; I get the feeling she’s getting ready to say something she’s not sure how I’ll react to; but she’s not afraid of me—Jackie isn’t really afraid of anything.
“Sounds like you really care about this girl,” she says, and I knew this was coming, “to do all of this to protect her.”
“No, I just worry about her.”
“You wouldn’t worry about someone you didn’t care for.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“OK,” she says, and I easily detect what she really wants to say: OK, but you’re full of shit.
Maybe she’s right; maybe I care for Izzy more than I should. But the bigger problem here is that my brother is the one who should be worrying about her, paying someone a million dollars to watch over her. But he’s an idiot. And somebody’s gotta pick up his slack.
I still can’t fucking believe he actually agreed to let Izzy go through with this stupid plan, or that he agreed not to interfere. Fuck him, and everybody else in his Order who’s letting this happen. Fuck ‘em all.
“Well, what makes you think I won’t just take the money and run?” Jackie asks with a smirk.
“Because I trust you.” Strange thing is, I actually do trust her.
“All right,” she says, changing the subject and her tone, “so then who are these two guys you’re sending with me? And how much do you trust them?”
“Not as much as you,” I say. “But they’ll keep you safe on the mere fact that the other half of their payment depends on it.”
“Guys you work with?” She’s trying to make herself feel better about all this.
“I don’t work with them,” I say, “but they work for me.”
The men I’ll be sending to Mexico with Jackie are not part of my brother’s Order, and don’t even know what it is. They’re just guys I’ve known for a long time, ex-military, and who have seen some messed-up shit in their lives, so their roles in Mexico won’t really faze them much. I hired them for the same reason I’m hiring Jackie: I can’t get anyone from our Order involved, because anyone loyal to Victor, doesn’t necessarily make them loyal to me.
I spend another three hours with Jackie, going over every detail; I show her photos of Izzy, and, because I want Jackie to be sure herself about this, I also show her photos and videos of the girls in compounds—not just Mexico, but everywhere else, too—and the things that happen to them. Jackie doesn’t want to do this—it’s all over her face—but money is The Great Negotiator, and one million is hard enough for a rich man to pass up, much less a woman who lives in a trailer park and drives a 2001 Acura with a huge dent in the driver’s door.
“Physically, you’ll be fine,” I tell her. “You’re considered too old to be kidnapped and sold in the slave trade, and my ex-military guys who’ll be going with you can protect you from the occasional horny idiot who might try to have his way with one of the rich buyers. But I doubt you’ll have to worry about that, even. They don’t usually mess with the buyers; but keeping your story straight, and being able to prove you are who you say you are is the most important job. You play the part, and I’ll prove it.”
“And you’re absolutely sure my story will be backed-up if they try to verify who I am?” she asks.
“Not if,” I say, “but when. They always do background checks. You just play your part, and don’t worry about the rest. I wouldn’t send you in there if I didn’t have that part under control.”
“OK.” She can’t keep eye contact with me anymore; her eyes stray everywhere else.
“Jackie”—I place my hand on her knee—“are you sure you can do this? You can’t go in there with that look on your face.”
She straightens her back and forces a believable smile easily enough.
“I’m sure I can do this,” she says. “And I want to. I’ve always wanted to shake things up a bit in my life”—she laughs under her breath—“didn’t exactly envision doing anything like this; I’d always dreamed of being an actress and going to Hollywood parties where I felt important”—she looks right at me; her nervous smile becomes something more confident—“But nothing ever happens how we envision it, does it, Nik?”
“No, it really doesn’t.” I laugh a little, too.
“What did you dream of being,” she asks, “before your life took the road it took?”
Free, I think to myself. Free to be…just like you, Jackie Young.
I never answer her question.
I fuck her before I leave, and I head straight for the bar where I’ve been living in a room upstairs, the same bar where I met her. And I don’t sleep—too much shit on my mind—but I just stare at the ceiling until night becomes day, and I can’t help but wonder if Izzy is already dead, and that none of this really matters anymore.