A Better Goodbye (19 page)

The clients turned out to be less trouble than the girls. Nothing more than a couple of drunks, a deadbeat who tried to skip out on Carmen without paying, and a guy who somehow got past the security door in the lobby and came upstairs saying he had an appointment with Ling. She hadn't worked in nearly a week at that point, so Nick hustled the guy to the elevator, telling him to stop the bullshit and squeezing his bicep just hard enough to let him know the pain could get worse.

Nick didn't mention it to Scott. Sierra did. But most of what she told him was intended to make Ling look bad, not compliment Nick for snuffing out a situation that could have brought the apartment manager down on them. “That bitch causes trouble even when she's not here,” Sierra said.

“So get me a kinder, gentler dragon lady and I'll give Ling the boot,” Scott said. “Otherwise, we need her. You know we do.”

“Okay, I'll find another girl,” Sierra said.

“Asian,” Scott said. “Not some East L.A.
chiquita
that calls herself Hawaiian.”

“I know the difference,” Sierra said.

Nick couldn't tell what bothered her more, Scott's being so specific about his requirements for Ling's replacement or the thought of doing business without an Asian masseuse. Nick wondered about it himself until the afternoon Scott buzzed up a friend of his. A guy named DuPree.

Right away Scott started talking like he was from South-Central and gave the guy what Nick guessed was the latest soul shake. Nick had never kept up with the grips even when he'd been in a gym with black guys every day. All he knew was that this guy kept staring at him the whole time Scott was fronting. When Scott finished, DuPree had a question for Nick.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Scott answered before Nick could: “That's Nick, my security guy. I told you about him.”

“Oh, yeah, the killer,” DuPree said, still eye-fucking Nick.

“Left your manners in jail, huh?” Nick said, pissed off that Scott was using him like some kind of a show dog.

“Who you think you're talking to?” DuPree asked.

“I don't know, you delivering pizza?”

“Say what?”

“I'd like a ten-inch pepperoni.”

“You a funny motherfucker, ain't you?”

DuPree gave Nick a look that was supposed to shrivel his balls, but Nick just stood there and sized him up. DuPree had to be three inches taller than he was, broad at the shoulders, narrow at the waist, with elevator shaft eyes that went all the way to the basement. But Nick had fought bigger men, beaten them and left them hurt and bleeding on the streets he once ran.

“Guys?” Scott said tentatively.

DuPree ignored him. Nick did too as he imagined what DuPree was thinking: how he'd like to cancel Nick's ticket, piss on his body and leave him for the worms. It wasn't because DuPree wanted anything Nick had or even because Nick had stood up to him. It was just who DuPree was.

“Come on, guys.” Scott was trying again. “You gotta chill out.”

It was the same shit as always, with or without the ghost of Alonzo Burgess. Nick wondered what it was about him that kept drawing him back to confrontation and violence. Maybe it was no more complicated than his having an instinct for recognizing an asshole who needed a beating. But Nick wished that just once a fight would be about something more than that. That was all. Just once.

“Want to see one of the girls, bro?” Scott said.

Nick saw a little of the badass in DuPree go away.

“Come on, man,” Scott said. “Make you feel better.”

“You got a problem with that?” DuPree asked Nick.

“Knock yourself out,” Nick said.

It was the end of the day, and Sierra and yet another new masseuse, this one calling herself Hanna—she had a Swedish accent to go with her blonde hair and blue eyes—were ready to leave. They'd both seen five clients, and they were tired. “Jerk-off fatigue,” Sierra called it. But being tired didn't explain the expression on her face when he proposed a massage for DuPree. She was scared.

Nick saw the look and thought it might be on with DuPree after all. He was here to protect the girls, and Sierra looked like she wanted protecting. Maybe it was innocence that made Hanna volunteer, or maybe she needed the money, or maybe she just liked black guys. It might have been all three, Nick thought, as he watched her take DuPree's hand and lead him to the guest bedroom, smiling as if he were her dream come true.

Sierra, her expression shifting from fright to disapproval, held her tongue until the door closed. Then she wheeled on Scott, saying, “Why do you bring that animal around here?”

“You don't get a fucking vote,” Scott told her.

“You know—”

“Shut the fuck up. Whatever the man wants, the man gets, and whoever trots her sweet ass into that room with him damn well better provide. Are we clear on that?”

Sierra stared at him defiantly. It was obvious she wanted to say no, that she wanted to tell Scott to go to hell. Even Scott, usually so self-involved that he noticed nothing else, must have picked up on it. But there was something in his anger that took the backbone out of her, something that made Nick wonder what had happened the last time she stood up to Scott.

“I'm still waiting for an answer,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

Her voice was almost inaudible; that should have been a concession in itself. But Scott wasn't going to let her off easy.

“What?” he said.

“I said yes,” Sierra told him, her voice getting louder as her shoulders sagged. “DuPree gets whatever he wants. We'll treat him like the king of, I don't know, fucking Africa.”

Scott worked up a big smile and wrapped an arm around her. “Come on,” he said. “Let's do some lines.”

He guided her toward the master bedroom. As she disappeared through the door, he looked back at Nick with a grin and pumped his fist like he was jerking off.

Even when he wants to be a good guy,
Nick thought,
he's an asshole.

While Scott and Sierra broke the house rule against drugs, Nick sat in the kitchen, savoring the solitude, not bothering to turn on the lights as night fell. His thoughts were about leaving as soon as possible, just getting the hell away from this fucked-up business even if he'd have to come back to it in the morning. The strong were always feeding on the weak. It had been that way in boxing, and it was the same in this world of see-through blouses and pumped-up tits. Fucking wearying was what it was, Nick decided. Soon enough he was asleep.

When he woke, he made his way back to the living room, where the lone source of light was the lit end of Sierra's cigarette. She flinched when he turned on the floor lamp next to the sofa where she was camped out.

“They gone?” he asked

“Yeah.” She stubbed out her smoke on the top of an empty Diet Coke can and dropped the butt inside.

Nick walked to the sliding door and opened it a crack to get some fresh air inside. One more edict from Scott: he didn't want the apartment smelling like an ashtray. Sierra knew it. But she had another cigarette lit by the time Nick turned around. She inhaled deeply, savoring the smoke as if it coated her nerves as well as her lungs. When she finally exhaled, she leaned back and the smoke formed a cloud over her head.

Nick looked closer at her then and saw Sierra as he never had before—worn to a nub, her vanity replaced by uncertainty and regret.

“What happened with Hanna?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“Hey, don't talk to me like—”

“I want to know what happened.”

Sierra took a long drag on her smoke. “She didn't tell me.”

“You saw her, though?”

“Yeah, when she was leaving.”

“Did she look like all right? Did she say anything?”

Sierra paused to take another drag. “Goddammit,” Nick said, knocking the cigarette out of her hand and grinding it out on the carpet with the sole of his shoe. “I want to know if Hanna was all right.”

“You're never all right after you see DuPree,” Sierra said.

“What do you mean?”

“Jesus Christ, use your fucking imagination.”

Nick did, for just a moment. He didn't enjoy it.

“Was DuPree still around?” he asked.

“No, he'd taken off by then. Him and Scott both.” Sierra shook her head. “I should have done him myself.”

“It's a little late to volunteer.”

“Fuck you,” Sierra said, but her voice had none of its usual edge. “These girls come into this business just out of high school or maybe fresh off the boat, and they don't know shit about what they're getting into. They run into a guy like DuPree, they got no idea how rough it can get. That motherfucker, I wouldn't be surprised if he was, like, one of those psychos going around raping and robbing everybody.”

“You serious?” Nick said.

“I don't know what the hell I am. I just know what's on the Internet. Plus I talked to some girls I used to work with.”

“So tell me.”

“You get off on this, is that what it is?”

“I want to know what I'll be up against if these assholes show up here.”

“Yeah, right.” Sierra chewed on a hangnail for a moment. “They found this girl that works alone, over by the Beverly Center, and after they finished with her, they fucked her in the ass with a gun. The barrel, you know? Over and over, taking turns, the sick motherfuckers. I heard she almost bled to death.”

Sierra stared at Nick through hard eyes.

“Glad you asked?”

“Jesus,” Nick said softly, and offered up a silent prayer for the girl in Sierra's story, and for Hanna, and for all the other soiled butterflies out there, whoever they were.

Scott was already at the apartment when Nick showed up the next morning, proving there was a first time for everything. Scott was a late-afternoon, early-evening guy, so Nick figured he was going to get bitched at for his run-in with Scott's buddy. DuPree, that was his name. But Scott turned the conversation upside down by talking about the new TV series he was starting work on, as if Nick gave a damn.

“I really need to focus,” Scott said. “Like, I know enough not to let myself get too high—Hollywood can crush your soul—but, man, this time I'm getting that old tingle.”

“Throw yourself a party,” Nick said.

“You got a bad attitude, you know that?”

“It's the only attitude I got.”

“Well, cool it, all right?”

“I was going to tell you to do the same with that gangster you got for an asshole buddy. What the fuck were you thinking about, bringing him in here?”

Scott shook his head theatrically, the half-assed actor in him finally coming out as it did in almost every conversation he had. “You and that goddamned Sierra,” he said. “I'm telling you . . . ”

“It was Hanna I was thinking of,” Nick said.

“Who?”

“You don't know?”

“How the hell am I supposed to keep track of—”

“Your buddy was with her last night.”

“Okay, now I know who you're talking about. Miss Sweden, the blonde with the tits out to here. So what if DuPree saw her? He sees a girl every time he comes over.”

“I think he hurt this one.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“She didn't hang around to tell anybody anything.”

“Then what makes you so sure she's hurt? For all you know, the little cunt took her money and ran off to see her fucking coke dealer.”

Scott picked up his canvas script bag and started toward the door. Nick was right behind him, saying, “What if she didn't? What if she went to the ER instead?”

“Come on, lighten up. This is all because you've got a hard-on for DuPree. Let me tell you something: He stops by pretty regular, so you better get used to him.”

“Does he tear up one of your girls every time?”

“We'll talk about it if the one you're so worried about ever shows up again, okay?” Scott paused before he opened the door. “Trust me, she was a flake.”