The Best Bad Dream (19 page)

The blue lights in the hall made everything look surreal. Jennifer didn't know what to think. How long had she been locked away here?

She had no idea.

Was it night or day? She had no idea about that, either. Panic shot through her and she tried her best to breathe in deeply seven times and then let the air out slowly seven times. Something she'd learned long ago when she had first studied meditation.

You could actually lower your heart rate and your blood pressure if you breathed in deeply and slowly let it out, seven and seven.

But it was a hell of a lot harder to do now. God, where was she? Hadn't Michelle told anyone yet?

And then she had a terrible thought. The answer to the Michelle question might well be, “No, she hadn't told anyone. No one.” Why? Because maybe she had been snatched by that freak Lucky Avila because of some hustle her sister had tried to run on him. God help her if that was true.

Because if it was, then who could Michelle go to? Not the cops. What would she say? “ Oh, officer, could you please help me? My sis was kidnapped by motorcycle gang members because I tried to rip them off in this deal with, uh, stolen bike engines.”

The cops would arrest her, and if some of the people she worked with found out she had squealed . . .

But Michelle would surely do something. She'd call someone to help her. Korean pals in Los Angeles, or maybe some of the Chinese gang members she had partnered with at one time or another.

But what could those guys do out here?

Jen felt it building in her again. The freaking fear. She wanted to scream, to rip the bars down with her bare hands.

Simultaneously, she began to recall something, something she had barely heard, and had paid no attention to at the time.

Michelle had been on the phone to Lucky and she had been kind of teasing him, saying, “I know you're up to something. I saw you the other night and I know you're up to something big. What's it called?”

And though she hadn't heard Lucky's end of the conversation Jennifer knew this must have been it. Whatever
it
was.

Now Jennifer recalled the scene even more clearly.

She had been exhausted from work and had had a few drinks when Michelle had made that call. She had been barely able to stay awake but she was sure there was something Michelle said, just before she went to sleep. Something about letters and numbers. Like a code of some kind. B-25? No, that wasn't it. D-32? No, but something like that. And when she had said it, whatever it was, even across the room she could hear Lucky's voice screaming at her.

“You stay away from all that, Michelle. I'm warning you!”

If only she knew what it was. Maybe it was some kind of bargaining chip she could use.

From the next cell she heard Gerri's voice, a mere whisper. “ Hey, Jennifer?”

Jennifer went to the corner of the cell. Leaned her face against the cold bars. “I'm here.”

“Good. I fell asleep and when I didn't hear you I thought maybe they'd, uh . . .”

“Taken me away?”

“No, let you out.”

“'Fraid not. We have to face it, Gerri. They aren't going to let us out. They just can't. There has to be some reason we're in here.”

“Thought you said we were gonna become sex slaves?”

“I did, but I don't really believe that. We're too old for that, and too educated.”

“Maybe
you
are,” Gerri said, “ but I got my education at the University of Good Times.”

“What do you mean?” Jennifer asked her.

“Hey, I mean like I quit school in the ninth grade and left home the same year. Got my education in the Bronx, working the street.”

Jennifer felt a blush come to her face, which, given their dilemma, seemed absurd. But there it was. She was still the good girl.

“You mean you were a—” It was just so hard to say it!

“A hooker? It's okay, you can say it. Yeah, I was for a couple of years, but after I got the hell beat out of me by my pimp I decided to make a career transition.”

She gave a rueful laugh and Jennifer found herself laughing with her.

“What did you do next?”

“Became a nuclear scientist,” Gerri said.

They both laughed again.

“See, that was when I discovered that once you quit school there aren't too many things you can do. Had a girlfriend wanted to be a lawyer, she had to go all the way back to ninth grade and start over. Found out everyone else was like seven years ahead of her. But you know what? She did it. Me, I didn't have the patience. I just traded hustling my body for hustling drugs and doing some robberies.”

Jennifer was really shocked now. Somehow she hadn't expected Gerri to be that much different from her. An innocent, decent person who had been taken off the street. But now it sounded like Gerri was maybe as bad as the people who had snatched them.

And then she had another thought. Maybe Gerri was as bad as her sister.

“You robbed people?”

“Yeah, I did. Home break-ins and stuff It was real exciting at first. I mean like so exciting that I sort of forgot that it was wrong. I had to climb up ladders and learn how to turn off alarm systems. Lot of stuff like that. And if someone happened to be home I had to—you know—shut ‘em up.”

Jennifer could hear the degenerate excitement in Gerri's voice, even now.

“How did you do that?”

“Threatened them with a knife or a gun.”

Jennifer felt her stomach turn over.

“Did you ever use the knife or the gun?”

The was a long silence and Jen wished she hadn't asked the question.

“Nah,” Gerri finally said. “I never had to cap nobody or cut ‘em neither.”

But there was something in her voice that made Jennifer doubt that was true.

“So how'd you get to Santa Fe?” Jennifer asked.

“Things was getting hot in New York, so I decided to take off. Some people I met tole me that this was a good town for, you know, the stuff I do, ‘cause there's a lot of rich, old people here from Hollywood and other places. People with a lot of a disposable income, if you know what I mean.”

Jennifer laughed but not in a joyous way. All through Gerri's story Jen had assumed there was going to be a turning point, some place where Gerri admitted that she had done wrong and had seen the light. Somehow, Jen had thought Santa Fe itself would become part of that happy moral. She was just waiting for Gerri to say something about how the spiritual nature of the town had made her turn to the path to goodness. But clearly that wasn't going to be the end of this tale.

Her jail mate was an unrepentant hustler and criminal. Which made her own kidnapping seem all the worse.

What could they possibly have in common? Nothing. She wasn't an evil person . . . but Michelle ... it kept coming back to Michelle. She had to ask. “Gerri, did you ever know a guy named Lucky Avila?”

The was a pause and Jen thought she could hear a sharp intake of breath.

“You kidding me? You know him, too?”

“So you
did
know him?” Jennifer confirmed.

“Yeah,” Gerri said. “He was the guy who got me to come down here to Santa Fe inna first place.”

“You're kidding. Lucky Avila, the motorcycle gang leader?”

“That's what he used to be,” Gerri said. “ He doing a lot more than that now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can't tell you ‘bout that.”

“Why not?”

“'Cause he tell me not to. See, I'm still hoping he might talk to whoever has put me in here and they'll let me out.”

Jesus, Jennifer thought. She's in with Lucky Avila.

“Let me ask you another question,” Jennifer said.

“I ain't talking ‘bout his new thang, okay?”

“No, fine. I just want to ask you a question. Did you hear about some of the other people who went missing in Santa Fe?”

“Yeah. I even knew one of them. Girl name of Darlene. She was a real crack ho. She disappear about two weeks ago. And a guy too. Darrell.”

“And what did Darrell do?”

“Whatchu mean? For a job?”

“Yeah. For a job.”

“Darrell was, like, into taking cars.”

Jennifer felt a chill shoot up her left arm.

“And this Darrell, did he happen to know Lucky Avila?”

There was a long pause.

“Well, did he?”

“Yeah, he know Lucky, too.”

Then Jennifer was certain she heard a gasp.

“Oh, my God,” Gerri said. “You think that Lucky had us all put in here?”

“I don't see him getting anyone out,” Jen said.

Then she slumped down on her bunk.

“But he was my partner out West for a while. Why would he get me to come down here jest to put me in a jail? That don't make no sense. See, I was making the man money. He would steer me to the houses and me and two other guys inna crew would break in and steal shit. Lucky got his cut.”

“You're right,” Jen said. “ It doesn't make any sense, unless somehow you were more valuable in here than making money out there.”

“Shit, girl,” Gerri said. “ Oh, shit.”

“Maybe you better tell me about that new business Lucky's running.”

“I can’t.”

“You can't afford not to. It may be the only thing we can use to keep ourselves alive. You've got to trust me, Gerri.”

There was a long silence.

“I'm not sure. Something about a magic formula. Something about making old people young. Crazy stuff like that.”

“It had a name, right?”

“I think I heard him say D-35. Something like that. But what's any of that got to do with us in here?”

Jennifer felt a terrible fear invade her like a cancer. She could barely sit up.

“How old were all these people who disappeared?”

“In their twenties. Like me.”

Then there was a long silence.

“God,” Jennifer said. “They're making this formula, this D-35, out of us?”

There was another long silence, then Gerri said, “ Girl, I think you just hit the jackpot.”

“Yeah.”

Neither of them said anything after that. Jennifer was shaking so hard she couldn't keep her thoughts formulated.

Finally, Gerri broke the silence.

“We gotta get out of here, girl.”

In a panicky voice she began to slam her fist into the bars, screaming.

“No,” Jennifer said. “We need to be quiet. Think.”

Gerri, however, was way beyond the thinking stage. She screamed, cried, and raged.

But not for long.

From the far end of the hallway they both heard the steel door being opened with a key. After the lock clicked, they heard the hinges
on the door squeal and both women pressed their heads against the bars to see who was walking in their direction.

But once Jennifer saw who was coming, she wished she hadn't looked. If all the rest of this had been like a bad dream, this was the part where you could no longer keep the panic down by breathing in and out seven times. The part where the panic and adrenaline ran through her arms and chest into her brain like electric voltage.

Jennifer looked at the man walking down the hall toward them— the man in the black leather shirt and pants, wearing high black boots and a terrifying leather mask on his face with zippers over the mouth and eyes—and she began to scream. It was a purely animal scream, the kind any living thing might let out when it realizes that it's headed for a painful and terrible death.

Then Gerri began to cry and scream. “No, no, no, no ... please. No, no . . .” over and over again.

But the words did no good at all.

The tall, wiry man with the black leather mask and the unzipped eyeholes took a ring of keys from his black leather belt and opened Gerri's cell.

Jennifer suddenly found her voice and screamed at him, “ Leave her alone. Leave her alone.”

But that did no good, either.

She saw him go into the cell, and she heard Gerri let out a terrible scream.

She heard what sounded like an electric
zaaaaap.

Then he was out of the cell again, carrying Gerri over his shoulder. In his right hand was a Taser stun gun.

Jennifer stood as close to the bars as she could, not out of bravery but because she was too terrified to move. Neither her feet nor her
arms nor anything else on her body was capable of motion. It was almost as though she had been hit with the Taser, too.

The leather man turned and looked directly at her.

He grunted, a terrible noise that sounded as though the beast was laughing at her.

Then he turned and carried Gerri down the hallway and through the steel door, which closed with a terrible clang.

Jennifer began to scream again, screamed from a fear she hadn't known even existed.

Now she was utterly alone. And the very next in line.

Chapter Twenty-five

Phil heard from Annie. She was so cool, and she called him Philip, which was oddly thrilling.

“ Tonight, Philip,” she said. “ Eight o'clock in Room 101, downstairs in the residence building.”

He had asked her what was happening there, but she just teased him.

“Can't tell you. It wouldn't be a surprise then, would it?”

Phil felt just like a kid going on a first date. Excited, scared, jittery, and barely able to wait.

Now he paced on his small balcony, looking out at the stars and the mountains. The rest of this trip was going to be so far removed from the first part. He could hardly believe how much things had changed.

Annie made him feel so young. So virile.

Great. It was going to be just great!

He started imagining taking Annie's blouse off as he kissed her shoulders. The fantasy was so intense he barely noticed Dee Dee come in the front door. She shut it ever so gently, and Phil thought about how when you knew someone like he knew Dee Dee you could tell when they did the “guilty shut.” Yeah, that was it. Just a little more finesse than she ordinarily would use to show her husband that she
was still a caring and decent person, but a little too decent and a little too caring for Dee Dee, the bitch!

“Philly?” she called, her voice in the “guilty sweet,” too high register.

“Out here, baby,” Phil said, going for the mocking but not too mocking voice so she couldn't tell if he was psychotically angry or not.