I Don't Like Where This Is Going (23 page)

I crept closer and could see that Grady, not surprisingly, was quite agitated, Tinker, amused. I snuck around the building hoping to spy Patience in one of the windows. I heard a shuffling in the brush, a jackrabbit I figured, and then I heard a terrifying gunshot
go off by my ear, saw a mound of dirt erupt by my leg, felt my heart expand to fill my chest and expel the air, and I froze. A man's voice said, “You can thank me later.” He sounded like he was underwater and far away.

I turned to see the shooter kick a dead rattlesnake. “Sidewinder,” he said. The man wore a Starbucks ball cap, a sleeveless gray sweatshirt, black cargo shorts, and white sneakers. “Wouldn't have killed you, but it would have hurt like a bastard.” The gunshot had summoned Grady and Tinker outside and unfamiliar faces to the upstairs windows. Tinker said, “We meet again.”

The furniture in the downstairs reception area was Victorian in style, cherrywood and crushed red velvet. A braid of artificial holly wound its way around the handrail and balusters and up the marble staircase. The faded red-and-white-flocked wallpaper screamed
bordello
. A large framed photograph on the wall over the sofa depicted the marble quarry in full operation. The levered blocks of stone were ghost-white. The foreman wore a pith helmet and jodhpurs. Next to the photograph hung a framed front page from the
Reese River Reveille
announcing the closing of the Adelaide Marble Quarry.

The shooter told me his name was Babatunji. I asked him why he was hanging around with these clowns and criminals. He said that's where the money was.

Tinker told me to take a seat, filthy and stinking as I was, and explained that prostitution was legal here in Shoshone County, and Misty's Wild West Ranch was a member in good standing of the county's Chamber of Commerce and was listed with and recommended by the Better Business Bureau.

I asked Grady how his two amigos were doing, and he stared at me. Tinker said, “Grady has suffered a recent hearing loss—perforated eardrums, I suspect. Nacho went to pieces and Chili will be collecting workers'
comp for the duration. His fossil-hunting days are over.”

“Why did you release these animals on us?”

Tinker said, “Boys were just having fun and would have let you go eventually.”

“I don't believe that.”

“You're right. Grady would have killed you dead.”

I could see all the cards at this table, could see them in Tinker and Grady's cold eyes, knew I had a foul hand, and I also knew they weren't going to let me fold and walk away. And just then Carl the incompetent Austin mechanic came downstairs and asked how my car was running.

I said, “Can't get sex at home, Carl?”

He said, “Not since the horse died. But I do love those little fillies upstairs.” He made a circle with his thumb and finger, inserted his tongue, and wagged it around. Then he said to Grady about me, “I thought you killed this knucklehead.”

Tinker looked at Grady, who looked at the floor. Tinker said, “Not yet.” He turned to Babatunji. “Take this jerkoff up to the quarry and dump him with the others.”

Babatunji raised an arm and invited me to the door.

I said, “After you.”

He grabbed my arm, lifted me from the chair, and shoved me toward the door. I realized I had three choices. I could run for it as soon as the door opened, but I could never outrun a speeding bullet. I could overpower one of these four, grab his gun, and get the drop on the others. Except that Babatunji would crush me like a stinkbug. I could try my luck and persuasive skills with Babatunji. I asked Tinker if I could just see Patience for a moment. He said I wouldn't like what I saw.

Babatunji and I stepped off the front porch and walked through
the parking lot. I said, “You don't have to hold the gun on me. I'm not stupid enough to run or try to overpower you.”

Babatunji told me to walk a few feet ahead of him and just follow the road. We walked.

I said, “Will you tell me where Patience is?”

“Upstairs.”

“And how she is.”

“She's been better. I won't lie.”

“What did they do to her?”

“Right now she's under sedation.”

I may have briefly thought I was speaking with a decent and reasonable man, but I was reminded by our grim circumstance that apparently he killed people for a living. Still, I had to try. I said, “Can't you just say you shot and dropped me, and let me go? Who's going to know?”

“No can do.”

I turned. “Who's it going to hurt?” I saw the headlights of a convoy of vehicles turn onto Quarry Road. “We've got visitors.” But, alas, not Bay and Mike.

Babatunji pointed his pistol to the brothel, shoved me toward the door, and said. “Let's go.” We hurried inside.

Babatunji lifted a corner of the velvet curtain panel and peeked outside. “About a half dozen of them, it looks like.”

From outside, we heard, “We're here to talk. No rough stuff.”

From behind us, we heard, “Don't nobody move. Drop the guns, gents,” an order that Tinker and Babatunji obeyed. “Now kick them over here.”

The front door opened, and a man stepped inside. He was wearing a familiar latex Ronan Farrow mask, and so were the three guys who followed him, two of whom were dressed alike in Miami-green twill polo shirts, houndstooth check slacks, and white Keds.
I told them their shoes were untied and that was asking for trouble. When they didn't respond, I said, You two killed Layla Davis. Isn't that right, K-Dirt? He corrected me: Ronan. I said, And you, Bleak? He mumbled an indecipherable response through the mask that may have been in reformed Egyptian. I said, Why? When they didn't respond, their boss said that Blythe had belonged to his organization, real property, bought and paid for. Letting her walk away would have set a bad precedent. A simple business decision.

“So you killed her sister?”

“Collateral damage. My associates here got a little carried away. But I always take care of my staff. If people minded their own p's and q's, they wouldn't get hurt.”

“You do understand that you can't own people.”

Tinker said, “Babatunji's great-great-great-great-whatever grandfather was owned by President Thomas Jefferson.” Then he said, “Let's be reasonable, Eli.”

Eli the boss, I presumed, must be the Eli Belinki, head of enforcement for the Invisible Empire that Elwood talked about. He said, “That was a grand gesture—thirty stories down. You have to admit.”

I said, “But nobody knows about it.”

“The people who need to know about it, know.”

“How did you make it go away?”

“Not by magic.”

Eli told Babatunji that Tinker was no longer his boss. “You're working for me now, for the company.” Babatunji crossed the room. Eli told him to stand out front and let any late-arriving customers know that the place was closed for renovations. And then he said to me, “I didn't expect to see you here. Or anywhere.”

“Mladinic's,” I said. Eli had been my wicked messenger.

Grady rapped at the side of his head with the heel of his
hand, opened his mouth in an extravagant yawn, and mumbled something unintelligible. The Ronan Farrow with the Hard Rock T-shirt sneezed. Eli said, “Nobody has to get hurt here.”

What I learned in the next few minutes corroborated what Elwood had told me that afternoon at his kitchen table and then some. Eli's Invisible Empire was quite jealous of its virtual monopoly of the Nevada sex trade and vigorous in its pursuit of renegades and upstarts. You can have your brothel, your franchise, as it were, but you'd best buy your product from, and pay your tribute to, headquarters, or you would be shut down. Just like in the burger business. But then Tinker and his Merry Men decided to go rogue, bypass the organization's recruitment and distribution department, and hope that Eli wouldn't find out. But those impulsive hopes were dashed when news of the single-wide explosion and the deaths of Creed and Nacho reached Vegas—a call, perhaps from one of the other Shoshone County sheriff's deputies on Eli's payroll—and summoned Eli and his Ronans to Pesadilla. They must have flown to Austin and driven down.

Tinker said, “What about the Asians? They do what they want and get away with it.”

Eli said, “They smuggle in the product and keep themselves busy with home invasions, identity theft, counterfeiting, that sort of thing. Some meth trafficking. Yes, and some prostitution. They have a niche clientele, the guys with acute cases of yellow fever, and we're okay with that.”

Carl said none of this was his affair, what Grady did on his own time was Grady's own business, and Eli told him to stifle it, and Carl said he was leaving, and he took out a pistol, waved it at Eli, and backed himself to the door. Eli said, “Look at my eyes, Carl, and listen to my words: Stop right there.” When Carl reached for the doorknob, Eli shot him and walked to Carl, bent over the writhing body, and said, “That there was a round-point, full-metal-jacket slug you took, and it's
going to hurt like hell for quite some time, and that should keep your mind off trying to stand.”

Eli straightened up. “Gets hot in here,” he said. He lifted his mask, wiped his sweaty face, and said, “So how are we going to play this, Tinker? Intelligently or expeditiously?”

And there it was, Bay's
reveal
staring me in the face. I recognized Eli as the excruciating asshat poker player at the Mandalay Bay casino and as the unsettling gentleman drinking a Rob Roy at the Boar's Head Bar. I said, “How long have you been watching us?”

“Since that afternoon.”

“I can't be a threat.”

“You're a nuisance, and I thank you for coming to your going-away party.” He nodded at Tinker and said, “We're paying Tinkerbelle a visit because he forgot he worked for me and was not an independent contractor. We're here to jog his memory.”

A man walked downstairs, stopped at the landing, took in the scene, said, “Whatever you got going on here, it doesn't concern me. I'll just be going.” He put on his cowboy hat.

“Not another one,” Eli said. “You're not going anywhere.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“I don't care who you are.”

“Marv Pearl, treasurer of Shoshone County.”

“And you just had sex with, what, a twelve-year-old girl?”

Marv said, “Out of my way,” and stepped toward the door.

The Ronan with the blue oxford shirt slammed his pistol into the side of Marv's face. Marv dropped like a rattlebag.

Eli said, “Why does everything have to be so fucking difficult?” He told three of the Ronans to go upstairs and fetch the girls and their gentlemen.

I said, “One of those ladies is my girlfriend.”

Eli said, “If you had listened to me then, none of this would be happening now. You understand that, don't you?”

The sneezy Ronan sneezed again. I told him he was probably allergic to the mask.

“Think so?”

“Latex is a common allergen.”

He pointed to his mask and said what sounded like, “It's a mess in here. I'm slimed.”

Eli told him to find the loo and clean up.

I said, “Why do you wear the masks?”

“At first because of the surveillance cameras and the facial recognition software the Feds have, but it's become a branding thing.”

Three girls, not looking older than fifteen, in vanilla robes and strawberry high heels, a blonde, a brunette, and an electric-blue-haired beauty, came down the stairs, followed by two Ronans, followed by three bewildered men, one wearing only black socks, one a red thong, and one a dog collar and leash, followed by the third Ronan carrying an unconscious Patience in her street clothes over his shoulder. He laid Patience on the couch. I said, “I'll take care of her.”

Eli told me to be still, and then he told Tinker he was taking the girls as a down payment. Tinker said how was he supposed to pay up without the brothel, and how could he run a brothel without girls. The blue-haired girl walked over to the knocked-out cowboy Marv, bent down, and spit in his face. Then she took off a shoe and pummeled his face with the stiletto heel. She beat him back into consciousness until the returning Sneezy took her by the shoulders, mumbled something in her ear, and embraced her as she wept in his arms, and I couldn't help but imagine the start of an improbable but tender love story right there, right now, wherein Sneezy and Blue get permission from the irascible
but sentimental Boss, the corporation's CEO, to leave the business and start a life of their own back in Blue's hometown in Idaho, and they wait for her to graduate from high school, and have a kid and get married, in that order, because that's how it's done these days, and, of course, being out of my mind with fear, I was using the Hollywood love story to distract myself from my probable imminent death, from the loss of Patience, and from my wretched helplessness.

Eli told his men to take the three girls out to the cars. Creed's phone buzzed in my pocket. I slipped it out. A message from Bay:
We're outside.
The girls objected to being moved. The brunette told Bleak, “Get your fucking hands off me, shithead.” The blonde said she was sick. Eli asked me what the text was about. I put the phone in my pocket. I said, “Mom. She worries.”

He held out his hand, wiggled his fingers. “Give!”

I handed him
my
phone, not Creed's.

“Nothing here.”

“That's how I know it's Mom.”

When Grady bolted for the door, Eli fired a warning shot into the floor. Eli told one of his Ronans to lock the three johns in the closet, where they could have a circle jerk. Then he noticed that the bullet shot to the floor had passed through Marv's neck. “Motherfucker. Why won't people listen to me?”

Tinker said, “You killed my best customer.”

Eli said, “And you're next.” Then he directed his men to throw the ex-cowboy into the closet with the others.