Birds of Prey - Crouch Blake - Страница 29

Tequila held up his hand, which had a butterfly tattooed on the back. “I’m Tequila,” he said.

She giggled, high as a kite. “I’m Candi. With an I.”

“Are you a stripper, Candi?”

“I’ve done some dancing.”

“Do you like bikes?”

She swallowed. “I love them.”

“I’ve got a Harley softail and a pocketful of hundred dollar bills. Interested?”

Candi with an I nodded.

Tequila reached in and swept her out of the trunk.

She hugged him, hard.

“Thanks for saving me, Tequila.” She breathed hot into his ear. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”

Yes, indeed, the night was definitely looking up.

The One That Didn’t

Michigan, 2004

Moni has the shakes. The shakes, and gut-wrenching nausea, and a jackhammer headache, and a dry, metallic taste in her mouth that makes her tongue seem twice as big. She looks down the alley, dark, wet, smelling like something died there, and doesn’t even hesitate to walk down it. She needs the fix so bad she’s come to this empty hull of a town just to get it.

How the fuck did I let this happen?

She’d been so good for a time. After she’d escaped that freak and his sick-ass video dungeon of horrors, Moni had gone legit. No more hooking. No more drugs. Moved out of the city, got a job at a health food store.

Out of the life. Respectable. Clean.

But the goddamn nightmares…

She shakes her head, as if that’s enough to rid it of the memories.

It isn’t.

She tried a free clinic, talking out her problems with some overworked shrink who got stuck doing community service. Was told she had post traumatic stress disorder, like soldiers get.

But knowing what her problem is doesn’t make the problem go away. Neither does the prescription shit the shrink told her to take.

Moni knows only one thing can dull the horror. Only one thing can wipe that freak’s leering face out of her head.

Glass crunches under the soles of her tennis shoes. Laces long since gone, the tread worn away. Above the stench of this alley, she smells something else—herself.

Something strange about knowing you’re at the low point of your life, and for her, that’s truly saying something.

But at least I’m not tricking.

And she could have. The motivation was there. So much easier to score a twenty-spot sucking some guy off for five minutes than stealing a purse. The one slung over her shoulder belonged to an eighty-year-old only four hours ago. She ripped it off the woman’s arm and sprinted off down the sidewalk. An older man had come after her, but he’d been too slow. She can still feel the burn from that run in the backs of her legs.

And the shame.

This is the last time. She keeps telling herself over and over and over, and she’s told herself this before, but it feels different this time.

One more high. One more fix.

And then she’s done.

She sees the fire in the oil drum up ahead, and her pulse accelerates.

Always a nervous proposition meeting a new dealer for the first time. And she certainly wouldn’t have chosen to come way out here into this veritable urban ghost town, but people don’t sell drugs in front of Gucci stores. A whore she’d shared needles with had recommended this place, saying it was the best.

Moni has her doubts. This town, like many others in Michigan, died years ago with the demise of the auto factories. The homes are all abandoned. The businesses all closed. The cops don’t bother patrolling, because there is nothing to protect and no one to serve.

Passing between the empty buildings, she slows her approach, wondering if she should make herself known.

“Hey!” she calls out to a black man leaning against the brick wall behind the oil drum.

He looks up from the cell phone in his hand and squints at her through the firelight, and the rising smoke between them.

“Hi, baby, you need something?”

“Yeah, looking for H. Can you help me?”

“Yeah, I got you. Come on. It’s aiight.”

Thank God.

Moni continues toward him, moving finally into the welcome heat of the fire.

The man is young, maybe nineteen, twenty tops, and he’s swallowed by a black down jacket.

“I need works too,” Moni says. In exchange for this address, she gave that whore her last syringe.

“Got all kinds of works for you, baby.” The man smiles, showing a gold tooth, but the smile isn’t for Moni. It’s for someone behind Moni.

She turns, senses suddenly on high alert, and sees two other guys strutting toward her. Black faces, black jackets, mean black eyes.

She’s seen eyes like this many times before. Knows with a sick, sinking feeling what’s happening.

“Look, uh, Jasmine sent me.” Moni hopes the girl’s name was Jasmine, but it dawns on her that it doesn’t matter. Jasmine didn’t send Moni here to score. She sent Moni here to get japped.

What is the world coming to when you can’t trust a whore strung out on smack?

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Moni says. “Don’t hurt me.” She knows they’ll run a train on her, but maybe they won’t be rough. Maybe she’ll even end up with the H when it’s over.

“Check this bitch with the don’t hurt me.” The man behind the oil drum laughs. “Whacha gonna do for us, baby? Huh?” He steps out from behind the fire and moves toward her. “You gamed a bit, din’ you? You gonna show us how skinny white bitches suck black cock?”

“Whatever you guys want,” Moni says, knees trembling. “Just don’t—”

The slap rocks her head backward, and Moni falls onto her ass.

“Don’t hurt me,” one of the men behind her mimes, and the trio busts out laughing again.

Moni covers up as best she can when the kicking starts.

A two hundred dollar gym shoe catches her face, frees a tooth.

She spits blood, starts to cry.

“Dude, don’t fuck her mouth up…how she gon’ suck?”

Moni begins to crawl back toward the mouth of the alley, but it’s too far away. Sick as it is, she wonders if she’ll still be able to get a fix when they’re done with her.

A kick to the belly. She kisses the filthy asphalt. Unbidden, the memory of the freak comes back, smiling down at her, ready with his blow torch and his video camera.

That time, she fought back. Fought for her worthless, miserable life, because she didn’t want to die.

Now?

Now dying doesn’t seem so bad.

And then the kicking stops and she readies herself for what’s coming next, trying to land upon some memory—so few worth a damn—to latch onto and take herself out of this moment.

“Walk the fuck back out this alley, cracker!”

What? They can’t be talking to her.

Moni looks up, sees a tall figure standing at the opening to the alley, ten feet away.

“I was wondering if I could buy some drugs from you guys.”

“Please,” Moni moans. “Help me.”

But the man doesn’t acknowledge her.

“He ain’t for real,” says one of the men behind her.

“Boy, it look like we open for business? Get the fuck—”

“Your door was open. So how about you stop fucking around and sell me something?”

In the moment of heavy silence that follows, Moni glances back over her shoulder at her attackers, who are staring at one another in complete bewilderment. The closest gangbanger puffs out his chest, taking two strides up to the white guy.

“Muthafucka, you just walked into the wrong fuckin—”

The blades seem to materialize in the white man’s hands, glinting in the fire from the oil drum.

Slash-slash and the black kid is on his knees, trying to put his face back on.

“Oh hell no.”

The two remaining men step over Moni, the one in front reaching into his pocket.

She keeps expecting the tall man to retreat, or at least step back, make some effort to protect himself, but he just stands there, letting them come.

The next swipe happens so fast, she only sees the blade for a fleeting second.