SIX
~JACE~
To say I was riding on cloud nine would have been an understatement to end all understatements. I was alive—no small wonder given what I’d gone through—and, save for what would likely pass as a few really bad sunburns before the month ran up, looking none the worse for wear. I was flush with cash, and for the first time in my life that fact actually seemed to bring me some sense of happiness. This, no doubt, had everything to do with the next point that, admittedly, had me riding higher than any of the others: I had the love of a good woman. No, scratch that, a great woman. We’d gone to hell and back—Almost literally! I thought, recalling my recurring dream from the hospital—wound up saving each other’s lives in the process, and come out of it an absolute powerhouse couple (if I did say so, myself). That we’d dealt a crippling blow to our mutual enemies with the Carrion Crew by wiping out both their drug and sex businesses in laying waste to an absolute shit-stain of a parasitic fuck honestly felt like frosting on the cake of life. I still couldn’t figure out which felt better, finally raining hot, furious death on T-Built or knowing that the cycling war between the Crows and the Carrion Crew was beginning to lean in our favor. Revenge felt good, I couldn’t bring myself to deny that much, and I loved knowing that the man who’d made Mia’s life a living hell for so long was finally worm food, but, though the Carrion Crew was far from dead, we’d made things undeniably better for the city and everyone in it by taking hard drugs and violent sex trade out of the equation. Furthermore, the sheer volume of lost revenue was likely hitting the Carrions like a leg being swept out from under an Olympic runner. Were they still in the race? Sure, and one would still be taking a risk in placing any bets just yet. But it would be a struggle, and a tolling one at that, for them to bring themselves neck-and-neck with the Crows. I grinned at my own metaphor, deciding that, so long as we—the proverbial runner with their feet still under them in this case—used this edge to put as much ground behind us as possible, the likelihood that they’d ever catch up was—
A horn blared as I rocketed through a light that had only just gone red. I cursed inwardly, chastising myself for risking the yellow—or, as my old man would’ve called it, “A solid orange!”—and swerved to avoid becoming a gored hood ornament on a neon green convertible. The car was, admittedly, vintage, shiny, and looking like the owner had put a good deal of time and money into making it look so good. It would’ve been a shame to ding up a beauty like that. Only thing that remotely compared to such an awful turn of events would’ve been me getting shredded under such a gorgeous ride and getting myself dead so soon after celebrating just how good life could be. Then, remembering Mia from the night before, I caught myself smirking even in the midst of the mayhem.
Least I could die happy, I thought, nearly tipping the chopper underneath me.
Through raw sill and sheer luck I managed to pull the roaring machine back into place beneath me. My right knee felt the hiss of passing pavement, and I figured if I hadn’t just lost a few scraps of denim from the pantleg of my jeans it was only just barely. The blap of a classic car horn crowed on, punctuated by a few other, newer horns singing behind it as well as a few startled shouts from people watching from the sidewalks. I caught sight of a few onlookers following my crazy stunt with the empty, vacant eyes of their cell phones. Confident that I’d survived the truly tolling portion of the event, I made a face at one cluster of amateur filmmakers—trying for something goofy and playful but, accompanied by the strain of still wrestling to keep the bike on the road, likely looking more like I was in the middle of a rectal-destroying fart—and worked the throttle like a lover.
“Come on, baby,” I whispered to the chopper, actually reaching out as I passed and grazing the classic beauty’s passenger-side headlamp with my fingertips as I cleared it with inches to spare, “don’t dump me in front of all these people.”
The full implication of the words only came to me after I spoke them, and as I slipped out of the warzone of an intersection and back into traffic I began to cackle. Imagining what I must have looked like at that moment—a roaring V8 chopper with smoldering flame decals against a navy blue body like something out of a B-movie demon flick, a death-defying traffic violation, and a laughing rider without a helmet casually fondling a would-be collision as he passed—and my laughter only doubled over.
I could almost see the YouTube headline on that footage when it found itself online:
“SUICIDAL BIKER LOSES HIS DAMN MIND!”
Coming out of it all with a smile on my face and a casual wave of apology to the driver behind me, it occurred to me again just how different my outlook on life was.
Cloud nine? Hell, you could go so far as to say I was riding on clouds one-through-nine and aiming for the rest ‘til I reached a hundred.
I was all clouds, sunshine, and, while I was at it, the whole damn sky!
It was almost enough to make me forget why I was out there in the first place. Okay, so I had, on more than one occasion since leaving my condo, actually gone so far as to forget why I was out and about.
I paused at that realization, actually glancing to one side to catch my reflection in the sun-warped window of a storefront as I passed. The view was skewed and too brief to offer any sort of insightful observation, but I had good reason to assume that there was nothing revealing on the surface to see. I could’ve stood in front of my own bathroom mirror for an entire day and likely seen nothing telling for even a second of that time. But if I had an opportunity to peel back a few layers, carve away some bone, and maybe take a gander at the gray matter thrumming beneath my skull…
Maybe.
Just maybe.
But, sweet fucking hell, why?
Because my girlfriend offered up her asshole? Could that truly be it? Part of me felt like it wasn’t such a farfetched reason, but most of me was more than a little confused by this. It wasn’t like the previous night had been my first time taking the back-door option with a girl. It was a rarer event, sure, and while I wouldn’t be crass and say something cliché like “it only happened on special occasions”—a few of my own past experiences with prostitutes and some of the kinkier one-night stands knocked that tired line out of play—it was definitely infrequent enough that I’d come to stop considering it for the most part. And, on any of those other occasions, I hadn’t come out of it the next day a beaming like an idiot or throwing myself into oncoming traffic or using old phrases that my grandfather might have tossed around like “on cloud nine.” Anal was just… well, anal—no more euphoric than the normally tried-and-true; different, sure, and certainly carrying a sizably different tone for the overall experience. But I never would have thought that it would have turned me into this. The love factor occurred to me then, reminding me that past hookers and bar skanks were hardly a sound comparison—and what was the scientific method invented for if not this very sort of dilemma?—and, yes, this felt like a reasonable hypothesis. I’d never felt anything for the other girls who’d been up for a little “exit polin,’” as Danny often called it when detailing his own exploits, so it was only reasonable that this occasion would resound as something different.
Except that Mia wasn’t an exception in this case.
In life, Anne had been something of a “good girl” in everyone’s eyes, my own included. It wasn’t entirely true—my experience had taught me that it rarely was—but there was an undeniable purity to her. When the mood for the kinkier stuff was upon her, Anne was always more suggestive than anything else. She’d make subtle gestures, hardly ever asking for something and never outright demanding it, that, when all was said and done, could have just as easily been dismissed. She’d start to lean a certain way so that her posture alone insisted a desired position. She’d roll her hips a certain way when I was reaching to touch her so that my hand landed somewhere that it might not have otherwise. She’d moan a little louder than usual if I dared to stray a bit farther than usual. And if I dared to mention that I’d caught on to her little tricks afterwards, she was likely to give me a confused look and confess that she had no idea what I was talking about; that I’d simply taken control, steered things in a dirtier direction, and she was only guilty of going along for the ride. Even then, unlike with prostitutes or random get-togethers, love had a way of still influencing the process. Where I wouldn’t worry so much about the unemotional hookups—certain that, if I went too fast or too hard, they’d tell me so—I was, like I had been the night before with Mia, very careful from start-to-finish. And while Anne was never one to complain on those occasions, a part of me was always nervous. I’d see her body tense or hear her breath catch from time-to-time and feel my own body tense and my own breath catch until I was certain I hadn’t hurt her. With Anne, anal sex was always like getting a chance to play with some precious, fragile toy: an exciting and exhilarating event that was hindered by the unnerving certainty that to truly enjoy it was to risk damaging something of great value. I’d approached Mia the night before with the same care and caution, but she’d proven to be far from fragile. If nothing else, I was certain that I’d come out of the act looking breakable and nervous.
Up until last night, anal sex with somebody I cared about was not unlike handling glass. With Mia, however, I’d felt like a potter handling a supple and eager bit of clay, a firm and responsive subject that was quick to take shape around my touch.
The way she’d thrust herself against me as I…
I hit the brakes and came to a screeching stop in time to avoid running another (orange) red light.
I rolled my eyes at myself and thought, Fucking shit, Jason, get a grip!
Speaking of grip! another part of my mind instantly replied.
I rolled my eyes at myself again. Then, remembering that I’d once again lost track of why I was out in the first place, I committed the gesture a third time.
My eyes were going to roll right out of their sockets at this rate.
I was a mess. One could go so far as to say I was a hot mess. Funny enough, this was not an unusual description that anyone who knew me might have used on any other day. Any member of the Crows, new or old, would probably utter some version of that line or another if asked to describe me (provided, of course, I wasn’t around to hear them say it). Now, however, I was a mess, hot or not, for a completely different reason. Before Mia, I’d been so laser-focused on a routine that something as insubstantial as a busted stereo was cause enough for an all-out meltdown. Sex, anal or otherwise, had felt like a punishment then; Danny had often “prescribed” an evening with a hooker as though it were medicine, and, like a whiny child, I’d carried on and protested as though it were medicine. The Crow’s business was a self-inflicted punishment that I carried on like a raging dictator solely for the purpose of reminding myself that I’d never be able to do it as well as my father or my brother. It was difficult to admit that I was suicidal, because every waking moment that I spent romanticizing my own death was equally spent romanticizing T-Built’s death; one couldn’t accuse me of being suicidal without just as directly accusing me of being homicidal. To be fair, though, while one couldn’t accuse me of one without accusing me of the other, one wouldn’t be wrong to accuse me of either. Yes, I had been a terrible mess before Mia and now I was a goofy, giggling mess that was practically farting rainbows and skipping gayly through the middle of the highway, throwing flower petals and blowing kisses along the way. I’d gone from being a hot, stinking pile of garbage heaped atop a time bomb that was set to go off at any moment to being an oven full of melting Valentine’s Day chocolates and scorched Hallmark cards. Two polar-opposite forms of “hot mess,” both just as much at risk of burning themselves up as the other.
There was a word for that, wasn’t there?
A car horn blared behind me, drawing my attention to the now-green light in front of me, and I waved a half-apologetic, half-thankful hand over my shoulder as I started forward. Riding on, trying to both remember what I’d been thinking a moment earlier as well as simultaneously trying to herd my thoughts as far from that crazed cycle of self-serving, psycho-analytical bullshit as I could. The irony that I couldn’t achieve one of those feats without immediately failing miserably at the other had me once again laughing like a lunatic. Once more considering how I must have appeared to any onlooker, I found myself thankful that Mia wasn’t there to see me like this. Though I doubted that the scene would be enough to convince her to up-and-leave me in that instant—though, to be fair to her, she’d have every right to—I couldn’t help but feel that I owed her a better version of myself than the crazy bastard a bunch of cruel years had twisted me into.
I was, after all, quite broken in the grand scheme of things.
Then, like a whisper from a nearly dead source of wisdom long-since buried in the rocky depths of my mind, a part of me thought, You’re not the only one…
And that was nearly enough to have me slamming on the brakes once more, this time without the benefit of a street light to justify the action.
It finally occurred to me then, coming to me in the instant when I’d all-but given up on finding a reason. Seeming so obvious in that moment, I wondered why it had ever seemed a mystery to me at all.
Why should I feel this way? Why should anal sex with Mia turn me into this when anal sex with any other girl, Anne included, never had? Why was I acting so strangely in the wake of everything that had happened?
Elementary, my dear dipshit… I thought.
(Suddenly seeing the two of us, mutually broken and near death, leaning against one another, supporting one another, and working our way free of the burning building so that we could save ourselves and alert the EMTs that Danny was still inside, saving him, as well.)
Because for the first time in my life, I was with a person whom I connected with so perfectly with that I no longer felt inclined to worry about where we might not connect. Like the well-oiled workings in my chopper, Mia and I meshed so well that neither of us had to worry about grinding the other’s gears.
And while a part of me felt like I was doing Anne’s memory a disservice through this thought process, I couldn’t help but think that her death was part of the reason things had turned out this way. A perfect gear had no trouble meshing with another perfect gear, after all; in most instances a perfect gear might even be able to pick up some of the slack brought on by a busted gear that it was partnered with. But what about when two broken gears were brought together? It was incredibly unlikely that two broken gears, perhaps jammed together by a cruel and sadistic cosmic mechanic, might manage to function even remotely. And a broken gear, knowing what it was, would forever feel like a burden if it found itself paired with a perfect gear, whether or not the pairing stood a chance of functioning. But what if two such busted gears, lonely and certain of their own uselessness, happened upon one another? What if they discovered that, by some divine miracle, their raging imperfections actually managed to fill in the gaps for the other? That they, busted and tormented as they were, might actually function better than even the newest and best of gears as a unit?
Well, in an event such as that, nobody—not a single goddam soul!—could blame one of those gears for feeling the way I felt; no one would dare question why someone like me should be riding on cloud nine, ten, and onward.
With this in mind (and my purpose once more, for the moment, forgotten), I caught myself in a fresh smile, wore it with pride, and turned at the next intersection.
And who-the-fuck-cared if it was orange or not?
****
Contracts!
There were contracts to be signed and collected regarding a few new business ventures the Crow Gang was undergoing. Among other things, this included a few of the first steps to securing the means to start what would eventually become a self-contained and independent prostitution ring run by none other than Mia’s previous mentor and ongoing best friend, Nancy.
Nancy had abandoned and then just as quickly reclaimed the title of “Candy: Whore Wonder” shortly after she and Mia had liberated themselves from the Carrion Crew and the street corner they’d been condemned to. Since then, Candy—she’d gone so far as to start claiming that Nancy was her “slave name” and none had been bold enough to ask her if she was serious—had taken to her new job with all the ferocity I’d known she would when I first offered it to her. While much of the paperwork I was handling could have just as easily waited another week-or-two, I was certain that Candy’s patience wouldn’t last that long. Through her work for the Carrion Crew, she’d developed something of a working relationship with many of the prostitutes; working relationships that ran too deep and were too personal to simply be filed away as friendships. When news of T-Built’s death spread—and to say that news of his death spread like wildfire was giving wildfires too much credit—many of them had scattered, taking advantage of the opportunity to slip the almost literal bonds of slavery.
But this had left many of them in almost as bad a situation as they’d started in. Though their work with the Carrion Crew paid practically nothing and exposed them to conditions on par with outright torture, they at least had homes and protection. With little other choice than to continue selling their bodies to survive, they were now susceptible to even greater cruelties while having no home or sense of safety to show for it.
Years earlier, back when my dad was in charge of the Crow Gang and the Carrion Crew wasn’t even a concept, he’d worked hand-in-hand with a small group of prostitutes who’d worked to unionize themselves. Back then, my father, seeing the benefits such a thing presented to the city, worked with those ladies to create jobs and circulate revenue that helped to strengthen not only the still-young Crows, but also the entire city. Without forcing them to work for the Crows—going to great lengths, in fact, to prevent it—he offered housing, protection, and healthcare for the prostitution rings in exchange for discounted services for their members and affiliates as well as their help in raising funds for “less than legal” needs to maintain the underground system that all-but kept the city running. Rumors of this “bordello” had been enough to bring in outside money, which quickly cycled through the city and created new jobs and revenue for everyone, crime affiliated or straight. Without naming names, my dad had boasted that a few of the city’s most influential politicians had gained enough leverage to do right by the city with the revenue generated by that work.
Now, years later—after dismantling the twisted prostitution ring and outright ending the illegal sex trafficking work that the Carrion Crew had been operating—I was aiming to reboot what my father and those pioneering women had started. And now, with “Mistress Candy” raring to get her old comrades off the streets and “playing the whore-game right,” I was forced to race to keep up with her. This, however, I couldn’t even begin to mind—it was, after all, why I’d wanted her to take the job in the first place.
As I dragged my cramping hand through the process of yet another signature, I wondered if my dad had ever found himself as intimidated by his brothel-running colleagues as I felt with Candy. She was sharp as a razor, funny as hell, and the best friend Mia could ever hope for, but she was intense!
“You get me those papers, big boy,” she’d said over the phone earlier that morning, “or Mia’s gonna need a boat and SCUBA gear to take you on your next date!”
Sure as I was that Candy wasn’t about to be taking things to a Medieval point anytime soon, the fact that she saw fit to issue such threats was motivation enough to ride out and handle the business. I finished up the last of the signatures and began itemizing various lists and documenting various phone numbers and email addresses so that various permits could be assigned (or *ahem* reproduced). A man who called himself Robert even though we both knew that wasn’t his name prattled on about how much he’d enjoyed working for my dad and then how much he’d enjoyed working for my brother. He was in the middle of explaining how much he was enjoying working for me—though, after the last of this work was settled, the bulk of his ongoing business would be going through Danny—when my phone buzzed with a new text message. I passively retrieved it, expecting either something Crow-related from Danny, cute and-slash-or sexy from Mia, or twisted and threatening from Candy.
I was wrong on all guesses:
FROM: UNKNOWN NUMBER
meet me on the
conrer of church
annd lyle in 29
mins. com alone.
IMPORTANT!!
re: mia
Though I wasn’t sure how long I’d been frowning down at my phone, it was obviously long enough for not-Robert to finally glance at the message and inject a nugget of wisdom:
“Someone can’t spell for shit, can they?”
I pressed the power button on my phone, casting the screen and the message on it into blackness, and slipped it back into my jacket pocket. “Someone can’t mind their fucking business, can they?” I rebutted, shooting him my best “I’m the big boss here”-glare. Then, knowing how to put the scare in guys like this, I added, “It’s not too late for me to void those checks and take my business elsewhere.”
Not-Robert’s eyes widened in an instant of telling terror, then narrowed to dagger-like slits. He grinned, a forced gesture if ever I’d seen one, and wet his lips before saying, “And you think you’ll fair better with anybody else?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I admitted, giving a casual and very not forced shrug. “But you’ve got more at stake if you lose the Crow’s protection than we’ve got if we lose your business. Especially with the news we’ve been getting regarding your little back-and-forth with the Feds.”
Not-Robert’s chest swelled with a panicked gasp, then he held it. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to look tough or if he was just holding his breath and hoping to bribe a witty response from his oxygen-deprived brain. In either case, neither worked for him. “And if I decide to take my business to the Carrion Crew instead?” he asked, challenging me with the only real ammunition he had at that point.
I issued a sincere laugh at that and leaned back, folding my arms across my chest. “Then I guess I’ll need a rowboat and some SCUBA gear to find you the next time we meet,” I said, hoping Candy wouldn’t mind that I borrowed her threat. “Since I’m pretty sure that some loose lips might let it be known that you had some very direct involvement in issuing phony docking permits to prevent any future attempts at shipping in any future product,” I said, holding up a few of the topmost contracts I’d just signed. “Guns, drugs, girls,” I recited a portion of the list of things that the paperwork would help prevent the Carrions from sneaking into the city; three of the things that had, up until that moment, represented the Carrion’s biggest cash crops. Then, tsking him, I added, “How do you think they’d react to a man who’s taken such steps against their business immediately showing up at their door and asking for work?”
Not-Robert gulped and looked down, turning bright red.
I nodded, made a show of gathering up the stack of papers and setting them out of his reach, and laced my fingers together in front of me on top of the table. “So, yeah, Robert, I’m not sure how well the Crows would fair if we had to take this business”—I gave the stack a casual pat with my left hand—“to somebody else. But I’m pretty sure we’d fair better than you if we did.” I re-laced my fingers and gave a shrug, admittedly a very juvenile and arrogant breed of shrug, pairing it with a smile to match. “So, what do you say, Robert,” I challenged, “you liked working with my old man and my brother, right? Who’s to say you won’t like working with me… provided you mind your fucking business and watch your fucking mouth.”
Not-Robert paused then, making an obvious show of sizing me up with his eyes and cocking a brow. “You packing, Presley?” he asked, sounding skeptical.
“Just a small-caliber and a big dick, Rob,” I answered with the straightest face I could manage. “And I’m a lousy shot with both; keep getting bitches in the belly when I try to aim at their face. Trust me, that gets messy. You don’t want to get messy, do you, Robert?”
We held each other’s gazes for a long, awkward time then.
The old-fashioned, crooked clock on the wall ticked away the moments, working in time with a throbbing vein in not-Robert’s throat.
And then we were laughing.
“You’re like your pops, Presley,” not-Robert boasted, giving me a few sharp slaps on the shoulder. “Biggest balls in the city and bronzed to a blinding shine!”
All in a day’s work, I thought, forcing the laughter to roll on as I let my mind wander back to that mysterious text.
****
Not-Robert, nosy prick though he might have been, had made a good point. Whoever had texted me couldn’t spell for shit. Worse yet, in their obviously sloppy and likely rushed typing process, they’d either mistyped “twenty” as “twenty-eight”—It’s just so hard when the zero’s that close to the eight, right, dumbass?—or they were operating on a strict half-hour schedule and had adjusted for a two-minute lag between when the message was sent and when I’d eventually read it. Considering that little “re: Mia”-bit, though, I wasn’t taking any chances one way or the other. I broke close to a dozen traffic laws and probably more than a hundred general codes of courtesy in the process, but I made it to the corner of Church Street and Lyle Avenue in under fifteen minutes.
Even if the mystery sender hadn’t mentioned Mia by name, that they were having me meet them at this corner—Mia’s corner!—would’ve made the subject obvious enough.
Except that it wasn’t Mia’s corner. Not anymore. She and Candy had been stationed there, sure, but Mia’s days as a prostitute were over and Candy would never have to work a street corner ever again. Now it was just a random intersection; another corner of concrete and lights with a little extra nugget of sordid history haunting the alleys. Now it was nothing. But then, at the same time, it would never be nothing—not to Mia or Candy, and not to me. That much was evident from the whirlwind of thoughts storming about my skull as I pulled up the corner and killed the engine to my chopper.
I was early.
I was early, so I couldn’t be surprised that the only people there seemed shocked to see me pull up as aggressively as I did. Their bewildered, nervous faces were evidence enough that they weren’t expecting a leather-clad biker to rocket up to that corner like a kamikaze pilot who’d traded in his plane for a set of wheels so he could wage a personal street war on them. Once certain I wasn’t about to go on a killing spree—What a stupid thing to stand still and wait for, I thought—they hurried along and left me and this nothing-yet-everything corner of sidewalk alone to our business.
Only our business was on hold until our mystery sender, the one responsible for “reuniting” us, finally showed.
In the meantime, I began contemplating the possible sources.
Though a good number of them might have known about me and Mia—might have known about Mia’s history as a prostitute for the Carrion Crew—it was unlikely that many knew the corner she worked. Moreover, anyone with the Crow Gang would know better than to get cryptic like that with me. That ruled out any of mine. However, on the opposite side of the gang-related coin…
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to deduce that the mystery sender might be a part of the Carrion Crew. A great number of their members had started off as Crows; hell, the “founding fathers” of the Crew were mostly comprised of some of the original Crows—men who’d worked directly beside my father before deciding to betray him and everything the Crows represented. Almost every day the Crows lost a few members, folks deciding that we were a sinking ship and that it was either hop aboard the SS Carrion and keep on sailing or sink into the icy waters. That being the case, there were plenty of Carrions, new and old alike, who’d not only know about me and Mia, but have access to the details regarding her work with the Crew.
Except that there wasn’t a single member of the Carrion Crew who wouldn’t have missed the chance at issuing a direct threat while sending me a text message. And, at that point, why bother texting me at all? It wasn’t their style to set up shady meetings with an enemy like this; not when they could arrange something more… personal.
The memory of Anne’s and my old house, littered in cop cars and bathed in their flashing lights, and the aftermath of T-Built’s attack on my old life jumped up, and I just as quickly buried it.
No…
Not Crow, but probably not Carrion, either.
But who the fuck did that leave?
“I’m guessing you’re Jason,” a voice that was trying very, very hard not to sound terrified chimed behind me, accompanied by three gentle taps on my shoulder.
I worked to keep my motions slow and threatening as I dipped my head back in the mystery sender’s—now the mystery speaker’s—direction. “Somebody who knows me would know that touching me is a good way to never touch anything ever again,” I said.
“Wonder what that says for my sister’s future,” the now-mystery speaker said, sounding a bit more bold this time.
Sister…?
Back on our first outing—it hadn’t been so much a date as it had been a ‘thank you’ meal for helping my dumb ass slip free from a Carrion Crew “fundraiser” with my skull intact—Mia had explained that her brother had been indirectly responsible for her predicament. Though the details were vague, it seemed that he’d gone and gotten himself in a hefty amount of debt with the Carrion Crew and, after getting himself arrested and imprisoned, was issued an ultimatum: find a way to pay what was owed or meet a painful end. Given that either option had to take place behind bars, this obviously set the degree of difficulty in both raising funds and being murdered a great deal higher than usual. I imagined the only thing harder than making decent money in jail was dying a decent death in jail. Though the “how” from that point to the next was a bit skewed—I wondered if even Mia knew the details regarding that part—the Carrion Crew decided that Mia would be the best means to pay off the debt. Needless to say, while Mia might have viewed her hellish “employment” as a noble means of keeping her brother alive, I wasn’t particularly keen on the man.
And here we’d only just met.
Seeing red and hearing only a shrill, high-pitched whine that I knew to exist only in my head, I lost track of a few seconds after that. I remembered being on my bike, turning my head to face the mystery speaker, now known to be Mia’s brother, and then there was a slideshow of still-shot views. Nervous face, panicked face, terrified face, pleading face, pained face. Then…
Click!
“Welcome back to the present, Mister Presley. We hope you enjoy your stay.”
The man squirming in my grip was all wire and sinew. I might have been disgusted if I weren’t so damned pissed. It was like someone had aimed to make a man-shaped thing out of pipe cleaners, realized the dumb thing couldn’t stand on its own, and started patching up the weak points with strips of chicken gristle. His clothes hung on his scrawny frame like melting candle wax. Cropped blond hair and too-pale skin only reinforced my theory that this thing was more built than born. It was his eyes, bright blue eyes that regarded me as a child might regard the monster under the bed when he finally decides to make his grand appearance, that had me convinced he was even remotely human. He and Mia had the same eyes.
“You’d better have a very good fucking reason for me not to rip you apart right here and now!” I snarled in his face.
My hands had him by the collar, partially choking him as I held him, pinned, against the wall of the nearest building. Because of this, his voice was strained as he said, “I can… give you… three… excellent… r-r-rea-sons…”
The last word of this started to break as his face began to turn blue, so I let him go. Ignoring the small crowd that my violent outburst had earned, I said, “Start listing, asshole.”
He panted, sucking in a few hearty gulps of air, seeming, in my opinion, to stall for time. Then, moments before I was about to bring my hands back into play, this time outright around his throat, he croaked out, “First:” he punctuated this with a raised index finger from his left hand, “it wouldn’t be worth it to commit an act of assault on a waste of skin like me. It’d just be unnecessary trouble for you. While I’m certain you’ve got ways of making it an in-and-out process with the local authorities, I’m sure you’d agree that it wouldn’t be worth your time. You’re an important man—a king!—and why should a great and powerful king waste his precious time wiping his hands of a peasant’s blood?”
I sneered at that, knowing a blowhard’s pandering drivel when I heard it. “You’re other two reasons better be a lot better and a lot less soaked in bullshit,” I warned.
He nodded, seeming to understand that I wasn’t buying his self-deprecating routine for a moment. “Second:” his middle finger rose to meet the still-raised index, “I believe that you care about my sister, and while I’ll get back around to that fact I feel it’s worth pointing out that it’d only hurt yourself in the long run if she found out that you beat up the brother she’s already endured so much to protect.”
My sneer deepened into an outright scowl, but I wasn’t about to call “bullshit” on that as much as I would have liked to.
“Sounds like he was quite the charmer,” I’d said after hearing about her predicament regarding him. “And you’re still doing all this for him?”
Her response was as noble as it was irritating: “Like I said: he’s family.”
“And the third reason,” I demanded through clenched teeth.
He nodded, seeming eager to get to that. So eager, in fact, that he outright dropped his hand, raised fingers and all, and followed it shortly after with his head, which dipped downward in a solemn, almost apologetic bow. “It’s… well, it’s like I said: I believe you care about my sister. Now, you seem like a smart guy—and that’s not me just soaking things in bullshit like you said; I’m being genuine here—and smart guys don’t typically go around liking girls and buying them all sorts of nice things if they don’t believe that the girl in question likes them back. I mean, guys go to great lengths to impress girls who wouldn’t give them the time of day all the time, but I don’t think either of us would call a guy like that ‘smart,’ right? ‘Desperate’ and ‘love-struck,’ sure, maybe even just cut to the chase and call them ‘horny,’ but still not ‘smart.’ I don’t think you’re doing all this for my sister because you’re desperate or love-struck, and, horny or not, I don’t think you snatched up Carrion Crew property just so you could fuck her.”
I felt myself tremble with rage at his words and began to advance, my right fist raised and hungry for a crunch to sound under its knuckles.
“WHOA! WHOA! WHOA!” he held up his hands, palms out, and I just barely managed to hold myself back. Satisfied that I wasn’t about to start swinging, he said, “I’m not trying to piss you off here, Jaso—er, Mister Presley. Whichever. I’m here for you, remember that. I’m just saying that if this was just about sex… well, she was working a street corner, right? It would’ve been a lot easier to get your rocks off with her without all this gang war business if that’s all it was about. That’s all I’m saying, right?”
I didn’t answer.
“Right?” he pressed further.
“Get to the fucking point,” I said, my voice barely even a whisper at that point.
“Right…” he said again, this time in resignation, with a sigh. “The point’s this: I think you care for Mia. Whether that means you have a decent enough crush to trouble yourself this far for her or if you’re head-over-heels in… well, you know—it’s none of my business one way or the other.”
“You got that right,” I said.
“But that all means that you’re probably thinking she likes you, too. Again, whether you’re under the assumption that she’s returning your crush or if you think that she, too, is head-over-heels, it stands to reason that you believe she cares for you, too.” He sighed and shook his head, “And I only thought it would be fair to warn you in advance that, if you’re looking for… that, that you’re looking in the wrong place. Not to get your blood pressure up all over again, but you are dealing with a girl whose entire livelihood has revolved around selling herself.”
“And now she’s out of that life,” I pointed out.
“Says who? You? The Carrions? Think about it, Mister Presley! When she was on the streets it was a quick sale! Money changes hands and then they get to put themselves in one of three orifices. Wham, bam, thank you, Mia. Transaction over. Simple enough, sure, but how many of those guys do you think walked off thinking they’d found love? How many likely fantasized about freeing her from that life? Or, at the very least, how many were at least smitten enough to come back again and throw down some more money? I’d imagine a great many, right? Sort of goes hand-in-hand with salesmanship to work for repeat business, and there’s no denying that Mia’s great at selling. Always has been. Twist the details of a story here, embellish there, and suddenly she’s the poor little girl who was trapped in a basement with a corpse. Next thing you know the whole city’s pouting beside her and chastising the big, bad brother for putting her in that horrible, horrible situation. But nobody ever caught wind of the detail that she was the one that wanted to go to that house in the first place—that it was her idea to find out what was in that locked basement—and that I was the one tagging along to help her do it. When she wanted to see a new movie but didn’t have the dough or a ride to the theater, some pouty lips aimed at the right jock were just the ticket. And, if you ask me, those same lips probably did a little more than just pout to make sure the deal was sealed. And that was well before she was fifteen, Mister Presley. But nobody ever thought to stop her; she was too good at selling herself as either the good girl or the victim every step of the way. Good girls and victims get public handouts, and what she couldn’t get being a good girl or a victim she was sure to get by being a slut behind closed doors.”
“I swear to Christ,” I said, seething, “I am a red cunt hair from bashing your teeth straight down your fucking throat!”
“Can’t you step back far enough from the situation to consider the bigger picture?” he demanded, suddenly sounding bolder once again. “This is a girl who has made a career her entire life of using any and all means to get her way. Yes, I got myself into some deep shit with the Carrion Crew. And, yes, Mia was kind enough to put herself out there to help me out while I was in a bind. I’m not proud of any of that—that I got into trouble in the first place or that she took it upon herself to help me the way she did. Obviously neither of us knew what sort of hell she was getting herself into. So, imagine if you will, that our cunning, manipulative Mia finds herself in an absolutely shitty situation, right? And it’s way too dangerous to just try to up-and-bail. We both met that T-Built asshole at some time or another; guy was out of his mind. Mia would know better than to try to give a guy like that the slip. She’d be signing her own death certificate. So what does she do? She does what she does best! She does a bit of research, finds the best target for the situation at hand. See,” he leaned in as though he were sharing a coveted secret, “the jocks she pursed her lips at in high school weren’t random guys with sports jackets, Mister Presley. They were the seniors with the nice cars and enough dough to buy a second ticket and all the popcorn a teen girl could gobble. Fast forward a few years, multiply that cunning, manipulative wit alongside them, and it’s not impossible to see her setting her sights on you, Mister Presley. Not only are you loaded-as-hell, but you’re a part of the only possible threat to the people who she was working for at the time. Nevermind part of the threat, you’re the Crow’s goddamned leader! And, what’s more, you have history—direct history!—with the sadistic psychopath holding Mia’s leash. And, as luck would have it, you just happened to cross paths, right? Now let me ask you this, Mister Presley, and bear in mind the only way a person could possibly know this is if they’d seen Mia do exactly this sort of thing before, because nobody but you and Mia truly knows how you came to meet one another.”
I stared coldly at him, not daring to invite his question; knowing he’d offer it up soon enough.
Sure enough: “How difficult would it have been for Mia to stage whatever sequence of events went down to get you to take notice of her in the first place?”
I blinked at that, forced despite all my efforts to think back on it.
I remembered following after T-Built through the crowded Carrion Crew event.
I remembered losing track of him in the crowd and hurrying to keep him in my sights.
I remembered Mia appearing out of nowhere, drink in hand, and colliding with me.
And then I remembered her calling me out, saying all the right things to get me paranoid; saying all the right things to convince me to get out of there.
But you asked her to leave with you; it was your idea to use her as cover to—
But what if you hadn’t? Would she have just volunteered?
Were circumstances already perfect for her to be certain she’d get to leave with you?
“I’m guessing she said all the right things, right? Just the right amount of sass to seem disinterested while offering up just enough sex appeal to keep you on the line,” he went on.
I remembered sardonic wit, passive disinterest, but an ongoing threat to reveal me to the crowd of murderous Carrions if I…
No panties. She’d practically advertised from the get-go that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.
“And I’m also guessing it didn’t take long to get her talking, right? Total strangers, but I’d put down money I don’t have to bet that she provided you with a decent enough line to get you interested, right?” he cocked his head, seeming genuinely interested. “She opened up to you, the poor, mistreated prostitute—down on her luck and just hoping for a better tomorrow—and, when she knew the hook was good and deep in the fish’s gullet, she pulled the line tight. Get the rich, powerful biker bad boy to take her on a couple of dates, sell herself real good to the big score, and finally find an opportunity to get you to swoop in and save her from all of it.”
“She… no,” I shook my head and looked away, trying to think of something to punch a hole in his logic. “She was attacked. Showed up bloody and beaten; some guy—some asshole—hurt her; hurt her bad, and—”
“And she had a knight in shining army to call on when it happened,” he injected. “It could have been anything, Mister Presley,” he went on. “If it hadn’t been that violent encounter it would’ve been another. Maybe something worse, maybe something not-so-bad. But isn’t that just the life she was trapped in? A whore on the streets? How long before somebody tries to rob her or hurts her or does something—anything!—to give her an excuse to call you. Then you, with all your resources and connections, take her off the streets, bring her to your fancy house or wherever you live, and just start pouring the lavish lifestyle all over her. ‘Poor Mia, here’s some pearls,’ ‘poor Mia, here’s a brand new wardrobe,’ ‘poor Mia, here’s a new car!’ And she gets to live a lush, protected life of luxury, knowing she’s got the best possible protection from those Carrion cocksuckers, and all she has to do for it is the exact same thing she was doing before: take a dick into one of three orifices. Except now she’s only got to take one dick, she’s getting a lot more in exchange for it, and she doesn’t have to share the profits or squat in a rotting drug den with a bunch of other whores.”
“No…” I heard myself whisper. “That’s not…”
“Meanwhile,” his words trailed on, “there’s a war brewing, one that’s been in a slow boil for a long time from the sounds of it but is most certainly in full heat with all this happening, and she’s got a safe place to watch the fireworks fly. Now let me ask you this, Mister Presley: do you truly believe that, if the Crow Gang begins to slip into the losing side of this war—if Mia started to see the safety net that you represent right now starting to tear—that she might not find herself somebody else who she might be able to convince to save her from you? What sort of sob story do you think she’d need to cook up to make you the monster in some fantasy story fed to the next knight in shining armor? Maybe she’d track down some honest cop and offer up the promise of exposing your whole operation to not-so-forgiving authorities. Can you imagine what sort of opportunity that would represent for some do-gooder lawperson, Mister Presley? The bust of a lifetime and a girl like Mia sucking their dick the whole time.” He groaned, sounding like he was disappointed in the whole situation. And maybe, just maybe, he really was. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Mister Presley, but my sister is a parasite. She always has been. I don’t think she’s ever cared for another human being in her entire life, but I can rattle off a list of names as thick as your average phonebook of guys who believed with all their hearts—as you seem to believe now—that she cared for them even half as much as they found themselves caring for her.”
I had no words left to say at that moment.
“I wanted to get you out here to warn you, Mister Presley,” he finally said after an extended silence. “If you want to go to war with the Carrion Crew, be my guest. Lord knows you’d be getting me out of a shit-ton of trouble if you took them out of the picture. But if you’re about to escalate things with them solely because of this business with my sister then there’s a strong possibility that you’ll be going into battle half-cocked and over a matter that, in all likelihood, will have run off with all your belongings before you get back. Assuming, of course, you don’t wind up getting yourself killed in the process.”
“Wh-why…?” I finally managed to stammer out. “Why tell me all this? What do you get out of this?”
He shrugged. “Honestly, not much. I already said that it’d be nice if you did manage to take them out, but I think you and I both know that’s a pretty big ‘if.’ Quite frankly, I’m just sick of life stabbing me in the eye with the shit-stick while she gets to manipulate and fuck her way in and out of every little thing. For once it’d just be nice to see things not work out for her. That, and,” he shrugged innocently, “you don’t seem like you deserve much more shit in your life. I looked into you, Mister Presley—if my sister can manage a background check on a guy like you it shouldn’t be a surprise that I can, too—and I just figured you’d dealt with enough to not add a lying, manipulative whore to the list of tragedies. Guys like us—guys who the universe just seems to love stomping on at every turn—gotta watch out for one another, right?”
Cloud nine dissipated in a dark sky then, replaced by dark, angry clouds and the promise of stormy, dangerous weather.
In the back of my mind, I heard broken gears grinding against one another; cursed to never fit properly with anything ever again.
I turned and walked away.
“I’m Malcolm, by the way,” he called after me as I headed back for my bike. “But everyone just calls me Mack. I hope there’s no hard feelings about all of this. Just thought it was right to warn you before things got painful, you know?”
I didn’t have it in me to respond.
I really just wanted to be alone at that moment.