Heller (21 page)

A horrible
crunching noise sounded nearby and Bourbon-Breath grunted loudly in
pain. Unexpectedly, he released his grip on me and I fell heavily
to the floor, trembling too much to remain standing. I lay on the
disgusting carpet, breathing heavily, seemingly somehow caught up
in the middle of a brawl between two men. I didn’t know who the
other man was or where he had come from, but I wanted to marry him
and have a million babies with him. He had just saved me from an
unimaginable experience. There were feet flailing everywhere and a
choking, gurgling noise coming from someone as I scrabbled quickly
in the direction of the bar.

“Fuck off,
shithead,” Bourbon-Breath spluttered, between groans. “This is none
of your fucking business. My bitch and I were only trying to have
some fun together.”

“That was my
woman you had there,” said the other voice, quiet and controlled,
and I almost cried with joy when I recognised those accented tones.
Heller! And boy, I could tell he was really angry from the strength
of his accent. “You’re going to regret messing with her, my friend.
And with me.”

Bourbon-Breath
laughed with blustering derision through his grunts of pain. “Fuck
off back to your own country and leave our sluts alone. Don’t need
no help from no soft dick pretty-boy foreigner like you to deal
with them.” And as if to express his furious hatred against all the
women he’d ever met in his wretched life, he twisted in Heller’s
arms to kick out at me violently with an on-target blow to my hip
as I blindly crawled to safety. I moaned softly as I fell to the
carpet again, pain cascading through my body.

“Matilda, get
out of here!” Heller shouted, and I didn’t need to be told twice. I
dragged my poor, bruised body out of the way to the safety of the
main bar, gasping for air, wiping my eyes and nose on my shirt, and
rubbing my bruised throat and jaw. I tried to ignore the horrible
screeching sounds coming from one of the fighting men. I suspected
they weren’t coming from Heller. Something or someone crashed into
the wall and I could hear the repeated dull sickening thud of
someone getting a vicious beating.

I turned back
anxiously to check on Heller, but I didn’t see what happened next
because I was forcefully hauled into the air by a pair of burly
arms. I screamed in terror, kicking out wildly, until I recognised
the gold logo on his black shirt. It was one of Heller’s men!

He
half-carried, half-dragged me out of the murky bar into the
sunlight. I gasped and choked, my eyes and nose streaming, drawing
in huge grateful gulps of fresh air. He pulled me over to Heller’s
Mercedes parked across the road. There was another black 4WD parked
directly behind it and inside that I glimpsed Dixie and Lily, a
pitiful couple of refugees, blubbering and clinging to each other.
Another of Heller’s man-mountains stood protectively next to the
second vehicle, arms crossed aggressively, reeking of
just-let-me-at-‘em
attitude.

I leaned over
Man-Mountain One’s supportive arm and indiscreetly vomited on the
road. I couldn’t stand up, in ten kinds of pain and Man-Mountain
One propped me on the back seat of the Mercedes, pouring bottled
water in my eyes and down my throat. I snatched the bottle from him
and drank it greedily, only to have to hurriedly lean out of the
vehicle to throw up again. I fell back on the seat in agony. My
stitches had split open and my injured arm was bleeding again, my
back and legs were aching where I had been kicked, my stomach was
painfully tender and my throat and jaw were killing me. Dixie tried
to come over to me, but Man-Mountain Two wouldn’t let her exit the
second vehicle.

After about
five minutes, Heller emerged from the bar, slipping something back
into one of his cargo pants pockets. With my limited vision it
looked like a switchblade. He stretched his arms above his head and
rubbed his jaw. He seemed fine. Later, when I could see properly
again, I noticed that he had cuts on both sets of knuckles, a gash
on his bottom lip and some faint bruising to his jaw. I wondered
how badly Heller had hurt the other man, because I had no doubt
that he had won the fight. Much, much later, after I knew more
about him, I wondered if Heller had even left that man alive.

As he walked
away from the bar towards the vehicles, the thug who had first
attacked me launched himself out of an adjacent dingy alley into
the middle of Heller’s back, knocking him flying to the ground.
Faster than any of us thought possible, Heller was upright,
dragging the man to his feet, brutally twisting his left arm behind
his back and slamming his head viciously and repeatedly against the
front blockwork wall of the bar. The man’s face was crushed up
against the grimy stucco and a trail of blood poured from his nose
that I was pretty sure had now been broken. Heller spoke
aggressively in the man’s ear, an absolutely terrifying expression
on his face. We couldn’t hear what he said. The man shouted back
something defiant over his shoulder, something which Heller
obviously didn’t agree with, because he snarled before jerking the
man’s arm upwards so violently that, even across the road, we could
hear the crack of his bone breaking. The man screamed in pain as
Heller slammed him into the wall a final time, then dropped him in
revulsion and walked back towards us, wiping his hands on his cargo
pants. The man slumped to the ground and lay there moaning noisily,
his arm at an abnormal angle, blood on his face, tears pouring down
his cheeks, a dark urine stain spreading across the front of his
jeans.

The two
man-mountains stood by impassively through the whole ordeal, arms
crossed, their features settled in approving expressions. They
didn’t budge a muscle to help Heller, apparently well aware that
their boss could take care of himself. Man-Mountain One slapped him
admiringly on the back as he walked over to us while Man-Mountain
Two said, “Good work, Boss.” Heller told him to bring Dixie and
Lily to his vehicle and leaned in the door where I had collapsed on
the back seat, somewhere between sitting and lying. I blinked my
stinging eyes, hardly daring to breathe in his presence.

“Matilda,” he
reproached, his voice serious. “You disobeyed me. I told you
specifically not to go inside.”

“Lily was
trying to escape out the door. She was crying and looked so scared.
I was afraid of what they’d do to her. I didn’t know how long you’d
be,” I told him in a subdued voice, not able to meet his eyes,
almost hyperventilating in terror. Heller’s ruthless, efficient
violence had frightened me deeply. I hadn’t been exposed to much
aggression in my life and today had been a real eye-opener. I began
trembling again.

“We have to
get out of here now,” he said unemotionally, although I knew he
could sense my fear. “Let me check if you’re okay.” He leaned in
further and quickly but gently examined my neck and jaw and prodded
my abdomen. “Nothing feels broken, but you’re going to hurt for a
while and have a lot of bruising,” he pronounced, handing me a
handkerchief to press down on my bleeding arm.

He took a
moment to softly cup my chin with his hand and lift my head so that
I was forced to look at him. “I wish you hadn’t seen that, Matilda,
but this business is rough sometimes. You need to know that because
it’s important. I’m not sorry about what I did. They would have
done worse to me, and to you, if they’d had the chance.”

Heller let me
go and climbed into the driver’s seat. He ordered the two
man-mountains to follow him in the second vehicle for a while in
case there was any further trouble. Dixie was told to sit in the
back with me to make sure I was okay; Lily forced to sit in front.
She had been initially terrified by her experience, during which
she’d been roughed up but ultimately unharmed. However I suspected
that she had already begun to reminisce about it as if it had been
nothing but a good laugh.

She confirmed
that suspicion immediately. “You people spoiled my adventure,” she
pouted petulantly as we drove.

“Mrs Hayek,
have you ever been gang-raped?” Heller asked bluntly. It was said
in that dangerously quiet voice that I was beginning to recognise
as signalling his immense fury, his accent more pronounced
again.

“No
unfortunately, but it sounds like a lot of fun,” replied Lily
defiantly, throwing back her hair. She was wearing a spare
Heller’s
work shirt that fell to her knees, her own clothes
almost shredded by those animals in the bar.

Heller thumped
the dashboard ferociously, making us all jump in fear. Dixie
clutched my hand tightly. “Well, I do know someone who’s been
gang-raped, and they didn’t find it the least bit
fun
!” he
shouted. Lily shrank back in her seat, cringing at his anger. “It
is a degrading and terrifying experience, from which some victims
never recover. It robs them of their feelings of safety and trust
in the world. Does that sound like
fun
to you?”

Lily shook her
head, and mumbled sulkily, “I s’pose not.”

“You risked
your own life and, more importantly for me, you risked Matilda’s
life with your incredibly stupid and reckless behaviour.”

“So what?
That’s what she’s being paid for,” she retorted with sullen
insolence.

Abruptly,
Heller twisted the steering wheel and screeched the Mercedes to a
sudden stop by the side of the road, waving on the other vehicle
when it slowed down. It drove off obediently. He opened his door
angrily and slammed it shut, stalking around to the passenger side.
Flinging Lily’s door open, he roughly pulled her out of the car,
dragging her by her arm to an alcove on the deserted footpath
created by a couple of large industrial skips.

Dixie and I
watched anxiously from the vehicle, clasping hands. “That man
scares the shit out of me,” she whispered fearfully. I nodded
fervently in agreement.

We couldn’t
hear what Heller was saying, but he seemed to be aggressively
pointing out a few home truths, towering over tiny Lily in an
extremely threatening manner. She looked rebellious though, and
flung some retort back at him, one hip thrust forward, hands on her
waist, that self-satisfied smile on her face. He sneered at her and
suddenly raised his hand, slapping her hard across the face,
unbalancing her and causing her to stumble. Dixie and I flinched in
unison.

She righted
herself and launching forward, tried to spit in his face. He
slapped her again, harder. She looked up at him, her hand cupping
her stinging skin, tears flooding her eyes. He stepped closer to
her and leaned down to yell right in her face, poking her in the
chest repeatedly with his index finger. She was genuinely sobbing
by then, big heaves lifting her shoulders, until she sank to the
ground holding her arms above her head protectively. He pulled her
up roughly by the arm and dragged her back to the Mercedes where he
threw her onto the front seat. He slammed his door hard when he
returned to his own seat.

Heller didn’t
drive away. We all sat in silence, except for Lily’s heavy sobs
that slowly subsided to watery sniffs. Dixie and I hardly dared to
breathe and had almost permanently melded our hands together, we
were clutching each other so tightly. Lily wiped her nose on her
shirt-sleeve and sat quietly, her breathing ragged. Heller clenched
the steering wheel with his hands. His voice was quiet, but
firm.

“Mrs Hayek has
indicated to me that she would now like to return to her hotel. I
have suggested that she needs to provide her husband with a version
of today’s events that explains her appearance, and she has agreed
to do this. Matilda, I need you to be there for that explanation.
Do you think you are capable?”

I swallowed
nervously and replied, “Yes Heller,” even though I wasn’t sure I
was capable. It just didn’t seem like a good time to say no to
him.

“Dixie, I am
taking you home immediately.”

“Yes Heller,”
Dixie whispered, uncharacteristically cowed.

He drove off
with a squeal of tyres and we travelled in complete silence,
punctuated only by an occasional sniff from Lily. Heller pulled up
outside of Dixie’s unit block and she leaned over to kiss me on the
cheek, squeezing my hand, then scrabbled out of the vehicle as fast
as humanly possible. I half-reclined on the back seat as we drove
off, clutching my injured arm, trying to stem the blood flow.

We pulled up
outside Lily’s luxury hotel. I sat up and tried to look as though I
wasn’t in extreme pain. Heller gestured impatiently for the valet
to come forward. He spoke in a muted voice, slipping the man some
money. The valet looked over at Lily, then at me, eyes wide. But it
was a six-star hotel and he’d been hired in part for his ability to
be discreet. He murmured some instructions and Heller drove off
slowly around to the back of the hotel where there was a staff
entrance. The valet met us at the door and bundled us to the staff
elevator where we were able to arrive at Lily’s suite without
attracting unwanted attention.

Unfortunately
for Lily though, her husband had returned to the suite from his
meetings prior to our arrival. He regarded us with horror, his eyes
flicking from his distressed wife, dressed only in a long
unfamiliar t-shirt, a grim-faced Heller and me, trying gamely to
hide my injuries. Lily burst into tears and threw herself on him,
clinging to him pitifully. He patted her back consolingly, but his
eyes moved to Heller for an explanation.

“I’m afraid
that your wife has been exceedingly foolish today, Mr Hayek,” he
said, glancing at the weeping woman coldly. “She has deceived both
you and Ms Chalmers about her activities. She rang Ms Chalmers this
morning to advise that she would be spending all day with you and
that Ms Chalmers would not be needed today. I presume that you
thought she was with Ms Chalmers?”