XXX Shamus (10 page)

Figg considered it, patted his palm with the fat end, and said, “Maybe a gut shot. Can’t mess up his face, though. It’s already ugly enough.”

Hopper flashed on his rape, the time Clint the mechanic beat him and fucked him. He harbored a hatred of Clint only rivaled by his hatred of Sister. No way he was adding another rape to his list.

Feet ready to pounce. Chair, not so heavy. It had metal tubes parallel on the ground instead of legs. He could work with that. One moment, when both Figg and Gary both have a hand on the bat, that’s when he would strike.

Figg handed it across. Hopper was willing time to slow down, microseconds like hours.

He stood and spun the chair and bashed Figg’s arms. The bat fell. Gary reached for it, but Hopper’s momentum carried him into the big guy, sent them both stumbling across the living room. Gary collapsed on the floor, tripped up Hopper, who used the chair to bounce himself off the wall and stay upright. He took advantage, crossed back to Figg and kicked his shins, backed him against the opposite wall, forced him down, flat on his back. Hopper squatted over him, the metal tubes cutting into Figg’s abdomen and throat, careful not to choke him too much.

“Looks like I might be able to whip up something for the snuff market. You want that?”

Figg gargled, shook his head while his hands tried to raise the bar from his neck. Pathetic.

Gary was on his feet, frozen. Hopper thought if the kid wasn’t so schooled on bad TV drama, he’d see his advantage and knock Hopper off Figg.

“You come near me, he dies.” There. That sounded kind of like Chuck Norris.

“Ga-r-ck,” Figg said.

“What you need to do is get me out of this chair quickly, and then we’ll all say good night like nice Christian adults, got it?”

Gary nodded.

“Scissors?” Hopper said, really banking on this kid staying stupid for five more minutes. Gary nodded again and held up a finger, headed towards the kitchen. Hopper eased the pressure from Figg enough to let him breath. He sucked in air.

“
Gary, Sta—
”

Hopper pressured up again, not letting Figg get the “b” on the end of the word. Not letting him add, “the bastard.”

“This is more fun than the bat.”

After some crashing noises from the kitchen, Gary popped in with a knife and said, “All I can find.”

“Great, sure, just cut my tape. Hurry. He can only live a few minutes without air.”

The kid was thinking too fast to figure it out, so he cut hard and ragged through the tape on Hopper’s chest, his left hand, then his right. Soon as he was free, Hopper grabbed Gary’s knife-holding wrist, headbutted him, and kicked the chair away. He replaced the metal tube on Figg’s neck with his shoe.

Gary: down and moaning and holding his head.

The Knife: on the floor.

Figg: clawing at Hopper’s ankle, scratching him good.

Hopper picked up the knife. He lifted his foot and slammed it into Figg’s nose. Finally heard the
crack
he was looking for.

He knelt down as Figg unleashed screams and blood, helped him to his side so he wouldn’t choke to death. The blood dripped rivers on the carpet, staining worse than the beer.

Hopper made sure Figg saw the knife and he said, “I told you so.”

“Oo ‘ead, ou arr thooo d-d-th-
dead
.”

“Listen, I didn’t get lucky. That was skill. So don’t talk big or you’ll be directing porn from a wheelchair like Larry Flynt. Let’s play straight while Gary’s still in misery. You don’t know where Yasmin is?”

“Fuck off.”

Knife tip on Figg’s zipper. “You sure?”

“Please, wait.” Figg blew snot and blood out of his nose, wiped it on his sleeve, winced when he brushed past the broken cartilage. “Wait. Really, I don’t know. I had asked around, too. Wanted one more flick. Before the baby. She was getting too far along.”

“Who’d you ask?”

“Gary knows them. He knows her friends. I don’t keep up socially. My life is somewhere else. This is business.”

Hopper stood. He picked up his bat. Double-fisted blade and blunt force. He said, “Gary, get up. You’re coming with me. We need to talk.”

Without waiting for an answer, he started for the front door.

Gary was glum in the passenger seat, but he knew better than to fight back. He’d followed Hopper to the car. After standing by with arms crossed while Hopper puked again, he reeled off some names of Yasmin’s friends, people who hadn’t been on the radar before then.

Hopper stopped him. “Let’s go see them.”

“It’s pretty late, don’t you think?”

“More like early. Doesn’t matter, because we need to keep them off-guard. Maybe if they’re sleepy, they’ll be willing to talk.”

Gary raised his hands. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

“I don’t know where they live, and I’m sure they’d feel better with you around. Hey, you loved the girl, didn’t you? Why not throw in on my side?”

Gary shook his head. Hopper slapped him.

“You’re coming along. That’s that.”

So Gary did his glum thing and told Hopper to try a woman named Anna Longspray. Screen name. Weird screen name—it was kind of porny but gross.

“Another of the pregnant girls,” Gary said. “She was into pissing.”

She lived in a crappy apartment complex near the interstate. Red brick, old but tough. Ground floor. Hopper picked up activity in the shadows, though. Might need the bat again.

They got out and walked to Anna’s door, knocked hard. The light was already on, and a baby’s wail seeped out. The door opened and a surprised Anna, beautifully molded from Hispanic and African genes, made a face at Gary.

“It’s four in the morning,” she said. Even in a thin silk robe, puffy-eyed without make-up, she was too pretty for this life, this situation. Her robe was spotted at her breasts, leftover milk.

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I was up anyway, this baby. I’m
so
tired. You’re not here on business, are you, Gary?”

Hopper spoke up. “Can we come in? I’m working for Yasmin’s family.

“Oh, that’s you. I heard.” A head shake and a step back. “All right. Inside.”

Hopper stepped in and tried to find a place to stand where he could keep an eye on all the doorways, make sure Gary didn’t try anything. Gary shut the door behind him and leaned against it, making a statement right there even if he wasn’t aware of it.

Anna crossed her arms. The baby’s crying was background noise. “The thing with Yasmin is that she knows what she’s doing.”

“So you actually had contact with her in the past two weeks?”

“Not that. I mean, before. She wasn’t just some Internet whore. The girl had a plan. Maybe she went chasing it. Too ambitious for me.”

“Why do you do the small scale, then? Seems less lucrative.”

She hummed a
dumb white boy
line and waved at her apartment. “You like this place? Smells like stale milk and baby shit. Looks worse. The walls are moist—you can flick a finger and make a hole. Probably got industrial strength pesticide seeping out, too.”

Hopper looked around and nodded. It was like a cardboard box, but the TV was nice, a chain-store brand. Decent couch, decent end-tables. Nice lamp.

“Exactly,” Anna said. “You getting it. Nice things so my child has a better place to get started in this world. The money is cash, tax-free, and it don’t take all that long to fuck, gives me lots of free time to be with the boy.”

“You did it before you were pregnant?”

She made a face. “That a joke? No way, I wasn’t into all that and no one even approached me back then. I didn’t go looking. Got knocked up, finished school in a special program set aside from the regular kids. That’s where Figg found me.”

Hopper didn’t expect the last part. “At school?”

“I said it, right? He was a substitute teacher, specialized in the discipline challenged. All ‘cause of that friend of his, the counselor.”

It chilled Hopper to hear her admit it so casually. The baby’s crying subsided into cooing and the relief spread through Anna’s body as she crossed her arms and moved towards the couch, sat down, a tight bundle.

“Finally, yeah, he’s been so restless tonight. It’s nearly dawn, isn’t it? I won’t get any rest.” A sad grin. “But that’s okay. I’m a mother now, and I accept that.”

Gary sat beside her on the couch, leaned back and started rubbing her shoulders with his strong hands. The effect was immediate like nicotine—eyes closed, deep breaths—as Hopper watched.

He said, “Which counselor were you talking about?”

She didn’t open her eyes, let the answer spill out all dreamy. “You should know if you’ve found me. They’re sickos but they’re careful and we never complain. Why stop the gravy train, you know? She’s got the Euro name. Ivana. Bitchier than she looks.”

“She looks pretty bitchy,” Hopper said.

“Mmmmm, yeah, that’s it. That’s the spot.” Anna’s head lolled back and forth fluidly to the rhythm of whatever song played in her head. Gary had worked his hands down her back like he’d been a trained masseuse. Worked her lower back and brushed his fingertips up her spine, back to the shoulders, slipped his hands under the fabric of the robe. Anna didn’t object, even shrugged some to let the robe spread open, revealing nothing beneath but her smooth caramel skin, milk-filled breasts, and stretch marks.

Gary kept working her shoulders as she freed her arms from her sleeves, and he kissed her neck deeply and loudly. Anna reached behind her for Gary’s hair, rubbed his scalp. Her other hand slipped into her lap, legs coming apart to show her pussy, the hair shaved into two thin strips on either side. She rubbed two fingers on her clit while rearranging herself across Gary’s lap so he could suck one of her nipples.

Hopper wanted to pull out and jerk off, but he was too tired and it would hurt. He asked another question. “Ivana’s made a business out of recruiting for Figg?”

“Ah, not, mm, just Figg. That’s what we’ve been hiding, and she’ll kill me when she finds out, but, Jesus,
bite
it, Gary.”

Gary playfully gnawed her nipple, pulled it. Her breathing ramped up.

“What are you hiding?”

“Yasmin,” she said, like a lover. “She sent…sent Yasmin out to Las Vegas. The girl wanted into the game more. She wanted to produce, direct, get out of the fetish stuff and into the mainstream.”

“Mainstream porn?”

“The stuff you can rent on cable.” Anna’s eyes opened and she gave Hopper a coy look, the one all porn actresses know—
You like to watch me fuck, don’t you?

“If you want, you can join us,” she said.

He shook his head. “I’d love to, but it’s been a rough night. I’ll take a raincheck.”

“One time sale only.”

“I’ll pass.”

That’s when Gary’s hand replaced her own in her lap and she spread wide and turned to kiss him. A deep rhythmic kiss once Gary caught on to the song she was imagining. He worked his pants down and was
goddamn
huge
, Hopper even more thankful not to be on the receiving end, remembering that even Clint’s tiny prick made him bleed.

These two on the couch arranged themselves into some sort of Sitting Reverse Cowgirl as he rammed it in. Anna must’ve been surprised. Her eyes bugged and she shouted, “
Shit holy fuck
, that is sen-si-tive. I had no idea!”

“First time since?” Gary said.

“What do you think, idiot? Yes, yes,
yessssssi, si, si, diablo
.”

The baby’s crying picked up but Hopper doubted Gary and Anna heard it. She was moaning in Spanish. Skin slapped like hammer and nail.

Hopper almost stayed to watch the finale, but he was starting to see double and had already dug up more info than he had expected to. Yasmin in Las Vegas. Ivana both educator and porn agent. Anna a willing participant, as most were, but what were the options? Hopper had heard complaints that the Army was full of the poor because sometimes, going to war was a better choice than cooking meth or dealing on the streets. How unfair it all was.

Fair’s a good myth
, Hopper thought. He said, “Gary, I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Cool.” It was more grunt than word.

“You’ll be all right?”

“I’ll stay. Hanging with you, mm, turned out…this ain’t half bad.”

“Shut up and fuck me,” Anna said.

Hopper told her thanks. When she turned her eyes to him, it seemed she wasn’t in the room anymore.

He got the hell out of there and listened to the sounds of rough sex until he landed in the cockpit of his car and drove away.

Hopper drove until he found a nearly empty parking lot at funeral home on Canal Boulevard. No way he could make it home, having already hit the curb three times. It was close to five in the morning. Hopper should have been asleep five times over, his adrenaline overpowering the natural opiate dumped into his blood after all the sex. An overdose, and yet he was still standing. Sitting. Falling. Just a quick round of shut-eye, half-hour, until he could function enough to crawl back to the Quarter, his apartment, his neglected bed.

Slipping into sleep provoked thoughts of his sister’s nonchalant announcement about her possible pregnancy. Father of a mutant baby. He could go to jail once it became known. The whole problem seemed much more personal until then. Now it was global.

Forget about it. About her and the missing girl. About the swelling. Until sunrise.

His wake-up call was a pair of hands grabbing his arm, dragging him out of the car and onto the pavement. Sun already blazing, blinding. The voice above him, same guy twisting his arm like a wet rag, Scottish accent muffled by gauze.

“You think I’m going to let you get away with coming into my home? We’re not finished until you’re my bitch.”

“Haven’t you done enough already?”

Another twist. The pain helped get Hopper’s eyes tuned right. Figg was alone. Must’ve followed him somehow. Hopper almost had a plan together when the guy kicked him in the ribs.

That pissed Hopper off.

He did a Curly Stooge move, running sideways on the ground, sweeping Figg’s legs out from under him. It wrenched the arm more, tearing tissue, but joints stayed in place and Hopper was able to climb up and get the bat from his car before Figg recovered.

A quick look around—not much traffic—gave Hopper enough confidence to beat Figg in the nose again. More blood, soaking the makeshift bandage. The Scotsman’s hair flew like he was slamdancing. He covered his face and gurgled, sat ass hard on the ground, spaghetti legs, not dead but losing a lot of blood.

Hopper knelt beside him. “You are an arrogant little fuck, aren’t you? I’ve never seen a child-pornographer take the moral high road before.”

Figg couldn’t answer. His nose was three times swollen already, one eye swollen shut, lip like a slug.

“Good thing you don’t star in your own flicks. Maybe there’s a market for freakfaced blowjobs or something.”

“U’wre
dead
.”

“Not at all. I’ve figured out the scheme you and the counselor cooked up, and I’m going to stop it now.”

“I’s p-p-phhhrfect-ly
le
-gal.”

“No, you only thought it was. Ivana sent you one too young. Probably has before. Lied about them, I guess. And you, I’m thinking you knew, too, but covered your ears and hummed la de la de da.” Hopper stood and grabbed Figg under his armpit. “Come on. You’re coming with me.”

The guy could barely stand, all the fight drained. Hopper felt Figg shake, fear in his voice. “What are you doing? Let me go.”

“No.”

“Please. You’ll be sorry.”

“Which one? You’re either begging or threatening, can’t do both. You’re coming with me. I’ll decide what to do with you later. We need you out of the picture for a few days.”

Hopper keyed open his passenger door and helped Figg inside, strapped him to the seat. The Scot slapped at the door handle and seatbelt latch, but his hands were slicked with spit and blood and weakness. Hopper hurried around to the driver’s side, shot out of the parking lot before anyone could get a plate number or an idea of what happened. Figg had left his Infiniti sedan in a proper parking spot, so maybe it could avoid suspicion for at least a day. It would only take a half-a-minute for one of Figg’s stable to finger Hopper, so he needed to be inventive.

Stashing him at the apartment or office was out. That left asking a favor from one of his mentors’ lifelines. He’d owe in return, which was a scary thought, but worth the investment at that moment.

“Before I drop you off,” Hopper said, “let me go ahead and apologize.”

Villeponteaux was a retired cop, now seventy-one, who was a monster operator in the eighties as a fully-pensioned retiree who missed the dirty doings of the NOPD. He freelanced his skills as an enforcer and interrogator. Hopper’s older mentor had been on the force himself, knew this guy by reputation and bar-bragging. So he made use of the old cop. Tit-for-tat sometimes, along with enough cash to get the guy fine cigars, clean pussy, and crack cocaine.