The Damned (12 page)

Dub was fresh out of the shower when the knock came. Fresh out of the shower and into his clothes, his long black hair slicked back, the black leather Devil’s Own jacket hanging over his bare chest. He opened the door to find Teddy standing in the hallway, looking refreshed, as if he too had taken care of some personal grooming. Dub was pretty sure he’d taken care of a little more than that. And why not—they had a big night ahead of them. He led him through the suite, into the inner sanctum, where Cherry Vanilla was seated on the couch, her hair perfect, her makeup impeccably applied, just as it had been before their lengthy round of sweat-inducing sex had smeared it.

They sat on the couch beside Cherry, Dub in the middle and Teddy beside him. Dub pulled out his canister of cocaine and dumped a large pile on the glass-topped coffee table. There was a syringe and a half full glass of water on the table, along with a razor blade, a two-inch-long piece of plastic straw, two bottles of Rolling Rock beer and a bulging plastic Ziploc bag of marijuana. Dub grabbed the razor and Cherry grabbed a bottle of beer. She took a drink and returned the bottle to the table, reached between the couch cushions and pulled out a narrow piece of rubber hose. She wrapped the three-foot length around her left arm and tied it off, Dub and Teddy watching as she looked down at the syringe. She could have been a child staring longingly at a piece of chocolate birthday cake, a teenager admiring a brand new bike or a young girl gazing upon the faded photograph of a long lost love. But she wasn’t any of those things. She was a junky hungering for her next fix, that next jolting shot to take her far away from Dub and Teddy and The Devil’s Own, back to whatever happy world she’d inhabited before Dub came along to pluck her off the street like a discarded coin. She picked up the syringe, pumping her arm a couple of times while Teddy leaned forward. Then the needle was in and the plunger depressed, Cherry sighing as she drew blood back into the tube, and then flushed it clean. She pulled the needle from her arm, tossed it back onto the table and slumped into the couch. Slack jawed, her eyes drifted shut, the rubber hose still tight around her arm as her lips slightly parted and her head lolled sideways.

Teddy said, “She really took to that stuff, huh?”

“Yep. Started her off the day I found her. Three days later, she’s cookin’ up her own shit. Been doing it ever since.” Dub picked up the short piece of straw. “Look at her, in her own little world.”

Cherry’s eyes were closed; she was smiling.

“What’s she so happy about?”

“Not us.”

“No shit,” Teddy said as Dub dipped down toward two fat lines of coke. He snorted them up and handed the straw to Teddy, who did the same, tossing the straw on the table as Dub capped his canister and stood. His gun was on the counter of a bar separating a small kitchen area from the living room—there was a miniature refrigerator and a microwave in the tightly-spaced enclosure, but no stove to cook on. He crossed the room, picked up the gun and shoved it into his waistband. Then he felt the two front pockets of his sleeveless jacket for the .9mm ammo clips he kept there, an absentminded, reflexive action he always performed directly before heading out onto the city streets.

Teddy stood up as Dub came back to the couch, grabbed his beer, and said, “Want one?”

“I’m good.”

“How ya feel?”

“Like I could knock out Tyson.”

“My man!” Dub said, and the two friends slapped palms. Dub finished off his beer and returned the bottle to the table. Then the two of them crossed the suite, Dub shutting the door behind them as they stepped into the hallway and started on their way, up the hallway and into the lobby, past the empty registration counter, back to the lounge—which now held twice as many people as before: raucous bikers and their mates, hoisting beers and shots of liquor, some passing joints back and forth with the Q’s.

At a table in a corner of the room, Bert and Ernie book-ended their three guests, who had gone through Tina’s fashion machine and come out looking like a trio of movie stars. Fast Freddie and his band mates were standing in front of the table, ogling the women when Dub and Teddy showed up. Dub put an arm around Freddie’s shoulder. The other, he looped around the bass player’s, who was making some kind of half-assed small talk with Mariah. She had completed the transformation from stringy-haired jailbird to an authentic golden-skinned goddess. Her long hair hung across her shoulders in dark curls, framing her breasts, which peeked out from the low-cut red silk blouse she wore. She was smiling up at the bass player, with his tattooed arms and face full of metal. Probably thought this was the party Dub had been talking about earlier in the evening, which, of course, it wasn’t.

Pulling the two men close, he said, “You like?”

“Oh yeah,” Freddie said, smiling down at the women as his partner said, “Man, do I!”

“You got a pound of high grade blow to trade for her?”

“Huh?” Freddie said, his smile evaporating as Dub said, “Beat it”, and Freddie and his boys immediately scattered across the floor.

A bottle of Dom Perignon sat in the middle of the table, surrounded by three half full, long-stemmed, hour-shaped glasses the women had been drinking from. Bert and Ernie each held a bottle of imported beer. The women, dressed in their tight-fitting outfits, looked up at Dub and Teddy, both of whom grabbed an empty chair from another table, scooted it over to theirs and sat down. Mariah’s eyes grew wide when Dub pulled a small plastic bag of cocaine from his pocket and tossed it onto the table, peeled apart the bag’s Ziplocked opening and dumped its entire contents onto the table.

“Gimme your knife,” he said, and Bert drew a hunting knife from behind his back. The huge knife had a rust-colored smear on it, but Dub knew it wasn’t rust on the razor-sharp blade. He knew exactly what it was. Using the knife to divide the coke into three large piles, he cut a thick line from each and positioned them in front of the women, pulled his cut-off piece of straw from his pocket and tossed it on the table in front of Trixie.

Smiling, she said, “Thank you, kind sir.” Then she grabbed the straw, dipped her head and began huffing up the coke. Finished with her line, she handed the straw to Heather, picked up her glass and drained it dry.

Ernie refilled the wineglasses as the straw passed from Heather to Mariah. When Mariah’s head rose from the table, Dub said, “Look, here’s the deal. I’ve got this guy on the east end of town, lives in a fucking mansion, big-assed compound. Big man around town ‘til whatever happened, happened. He’s throwing a party tonight, and he asked me to bring a few girls out to his place. Mister Carlicci—”

Mariah’s eyes narrowed, and Dub smiled, because he could see the recognition register within them. “That’s right,” he said. “
That
Mister Carlicci, the same cat they spread all over the newspapers a couple of months ago. The guy’s got food and drink, and more drugs than a friggin’ pharmacy, thousand-dollar silk sheets—everything. Like I said: he lives in a mansion in a compound with a bunch of his associates. Just a bunch of good ol’
eye-
talian boys looking for a little female companionship. That’s where you come in.”

Dub looked across the table at Heather, then back at Mariah. Teddy glanced over his shoulder at the crowd and Bert and Ernie hoisted their beers, almost as if they were twins sharing a single brain.

Trixie took a drink of wine, and Dub said, “Play your cards right, be on your best behavior; Carlicci’ll pair you up with his boys. They’ll treat you like queens and you’ll live happily ever after.”

“What do you get out of it?” Mariah asked him.

“The heartwarming sense of satisfaction that comes from helping out a friend, and more drugs than I can shake a stick at.”

Teddy snickered while Bert and Ernie barked like a couple of trained seals.

“What if we don’t… you know… like ‘em?” Trixie said.

Dub looked at her, laughed and shook his head. “Some day,” he said, “I’m gonna meet a blonde that isn’t a dumbass, but it sure as hell ain’t gonna be today, is it? Fresh outa the slammer, scrubbed and fed and outfitted like a fucking movie star, and you wanta know what happens if you don’t like ‘em.” He showed her the smeared side of the blade. “See this?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ll be on your best behavior. You will make them fucking
love
you. Or I’ll saw off every one of your fingers and throw your ass back in that goddamn cell.”

“What’s not to like?” Heather said. “Food, drugs, a safe, warm bed to sleep in?”

“There ya go.” Dub smiled as he cut six more huge lines from the three mounds of coke, leaving a tidy amount to scrape over in front of him and Teddy. “Do it up, ladies,” he said, and, Mariah, still holding the straw, lowered her head to the table.

When it was over, the wineglasses empty, Bert and Ernie’s beer bottles on the table and the table clear of coke, Dub said, “Shall we?”

Freddie and his boys were taking the stage when Dub’s party stood and started across the room. Dub, Teddy, and Bert and Ernie followed the three women, who strutted side-by-side through the bar like three red-hot video vixens straight out of a ZZ Top video. Mariah in the middle, flanked by the two blondes in their skintight miniskirts. Alone, they wouldn’t have made it halfway to the entryway. But they weren’t alone, so they walked through the crowd, untouched but not unnoticed, most everyone in the place watching them, catcalling and whistling, some calling them whores and bitches. Many of the women casting scornful looks their way, as if jealous of these women, who were really nothing more than walking sides of beef on the way to spend what was left of their lives in servitude to the ruthless head of a murdering band of hardened thugs, no more a guest of honor than a slain hog would have been at the company barbecue.

When they reached the sidewalk, Bert and Ernie escorted the women back to the Escalade, opening doors like a couple of roadies settling their rock-star-employers in for a comfy ride back to the airport. While the two bikers climbed inside, Dub and Teddy returned to the SUV. Dub opened the door and the dome light came on, revealing a man in the back seat. He was short with curly black hair, his face a cruel parody of an old
Star Trek
episode, where the skin tone of two men was divided down the middle, one side black and the other white. The right side of
this
man’s face was unblemished, the left, a twisted mass of scar tissue that ran high up into his scalp, as if he’d survived a horrific traffic accident, or had his head caught in an industrial steam press. He’d gone off to
Iraq
to serve his country, and left a large part of himself on those dusty battlegrounds. He was drumming the fingers of his right hand against a briefcase that lay across his lap.
His left hand, a misshapen lump of gnarled flesh which had no fingers at all, rested at his side like a deformed rat.
His eyes were glassy, his pupils dilated.

Dub and Teddy slid into their seats. The doors slammed shut and the light went out, and Dub turned to face him. “What say, Spudnik?” He reached through to the back. The two men bumped fists and Dub retracted his arm.

“W’sup, Dub?”

“We all set?”

“Kingdom, baby.”

Dub settled back in his seat. The key was in the ignition. Dub twisted it and the engine purred to life, slipped the car into gear and the headlights snapped on. Then he pulled away from the curb, leading Bert and Ernie and their companions through the pitch black city streets.

No one said much on their way out to the east end of the county. Dub kept his eyes peeled for movement along the roadway while Spud sat in the backseat, still drumming his fingers across his briefcase. Teddy fired up a joint and they passed it around. By the time it was gone they were deep into the high-end real estate, where six-figures barely got your foot in the door. They saw no lights along this route, save for a dim yellow glow every now and then to let them know that, yes, there
were
people scattered about, survivors, who unbeknownst to themselves would soon be treated to face to face meetings with Dub and The Devil’s Own. Dub wondered who these people were, what they were surviving on, what kind of lives they’d led before the world went reeling like a tilted pinball machine. More importantly, what kind of treasures lay beyond those windows. Soon he and his boys would go door to door to find out for themselves. But all that would come later. Right now they had business to transact, deals to make, goals to accomplish.

Halfway up Carlicci’s street, Dub noticed lights burning in one of the houses adjoining his property, and the one next to it, not the dim glow of candles, but electric lights. This struck him as odd and out of place, because on their last trip out, all the houses had been dark, all of them blacked out, except for Carlicci’s, of course, with his tanker truck in the driveway and the industrial generator powering the mansion, and as they pulled up to Carlicci’s place, Dub realized that power was up and running at the house bordering the other end of the property as well.

Thick shrubs lined either side of the long, circular drive that wound its way up to the mansion. The two-story, gabled structure (so huge, it could have been a hotel) overlooked what had once been a lush field of green rivaling the storied cathedrals of baseball. Now the finely manicured lawn was dead, covered by dust and ash. The mansion, with its well lit interiors, stood out like a beacon in the darkness. Floodlights swept the grounds, casting the ashen landscape in an eerie black and white hue. Several vehicles were parked along the driveway: a cobalt-blue Fleetwood, a midnight-black Hummer and a cherry-red Corvette. A tanker truck stood like a sleek metal beast near the side of one of two guest houses, a hundred or so yards east of the main building.

Two armed men stood guard at the foot of the driveway, but the SUV was not held up once its occupants were ascertained. They were expected, invited guests who had done business here many times before, and once the vehicles moved forward the guards returned to the shadows, to the lawn chairs they’d occupied when the headlights had first appeared on the roadway.

Dub parked and Bert pulled in behind him, and everyone exited the vehicles. Then the front door opened and a couple of guys stepped out onto the porch, one of whom was Tony Carlicci, heir-apparent to Oscar, the high ranking member of an organized crime family whose roots stretched from New York to New Jersey, to the great Midwest and beyond. The only thing apparent to Dub, however, was how shitty the old man treated his son. The two men came down the walkway, eyeing Mariah and her companions as if they were tonight’s dinner, which they well could have been, for all Dub knew. Truth be told, he hadn’t a clue what had become of any of the women he’d left with Carlicci and his boys. Three women he’d brought out on two different occasions. Six women, and not a trace of the first three when the second group was left behind. No telling what Carlicci had done with them. He wondered if he’d see any of them tonight—he doubted that he would. Not that he cared much. As long as he got his asking price—a pound of heroin and two pounds of cocaine—he’d keep bringing them out ‘til the cows came home. Or Carlicci ran out of dope. Like that was ever going to happen.

“W’sup, dawg?” Dub said.

Tony nodded as Ernie led the women to the rear of the Escalade. He opened the rear compartment, reached inside and handed each of them a tote bag packed full of the clothes and toiletries, perfume and makeup Tina had provided them with; everything they’d need to keep up their appearance, and keep the men coming back for more. The bags were stylish, as were the clothes they wore. They picked them up by their drawstrings and turned, smiling as if they’d just struck gold, or maybe Carlicci, with his own vibrant smile and sleek, six-foot frame was that mythical pot at the end of the rainbow. His eyes were the color of the light blue sky that had faded from the scene seven weeks ago. His short black hair, salted gray at the temples, gave him a certain air of sophistication. He had on a charcoal-gray Armani suit, a wine-colored shirt but no tie. His shoes were shined and a hint of cologne hung about him, as if it was his way of saying, ‘yes, things are bad out there, but we are not animals’. He looked nothing like the gangster his father had raised him to be. He had to be better than what Mariah and her counterparts had grown used to these last couple of weeks in their dreary cages. Anything was better than servicing The Devil’s Own. At least that part of their existence was over with. Now they had one last duty to perform. One last function and Dub would cut them loose.

Tony looped an arm around Mariah’s waist. Still smiling, he said, “You’ve really outdone yourself, haven’t you, Dub?”

“I aims to please.”

Ernie slammed the hatch down, and Tony said, “What’s your name?”

“Mariah.”

“Like the song, huh?”

“Ugh,” she said. “That
song
.”

“What, you don’t like it?”

“The shit I had to listen to growing up.”

“It’s a beautiful song. Just like you.”

Mariah batted her eyes a couple of times, smiled and said, “Thank you.” She had a soft, alluring look that seemed to draw men to her. Dub sure as hell felt it, and he began to wonder if maybe he should have kept her. Kept Mariah and brought Cherry Vanilla along in her place. At the very least, he should’ve taken her to a room and had a taste of her before leaving the hotel. Even in the dimly lit cell, unwashed and unclean, he had recognized a certain amount of beauty, with her dark eyes, the auburn hair and the high cheekbones, but who could’ve known she’d come out looking like
this?

They followed Mariah and Tony, who suddenly stopped. “Whoa,” he said. “The fuck happened to
you?
” He was talking to Spud, as if offended by the disfigurement he’d just noticed.

“Fuck you.” Spud’s words came out hoarse, as if they’d been dragged through a windpipe as raw as the left side of his face.

“The fuck’d you say to me?”

“I said, fuck you, you grease-ball mother—”

Tony’s companion turned; his hand disappeared beneath his jacket, a hostile act that did not go unnoticed by Dub and his mates.

“Spud, huh-uh,” Dub said. “Tony, what the fuck? He’s with us. Cut the shit.”

“
Look
at him—”

“Look at
you!
”

“C’mon, Spud.”

“Fuck him!”

“—what’d you
want
me to say, welcome to my beautiful home, you charming motherfucker, you? What’d you bring him out here for, to ugly-up the place?
Look
at—”

“He’s my brother, goddamnit. He’s a fucking war hero.”

Spud wasn’t his brother, and he sure as hell wasn’t a war hero. But Dub had to put a stop to this quickly before it got out of hand. The last thing he needed was Spud pulling that switchblade of his, gutting their host while the sidekick drew his weapon and world war three commenced in a hail of blood and bullets and falling bodies, all before they had even stepped inside the joint. And Spud was thinking about it. Dub could see it in his eyes. He looked like a troll, standing there with his misshapen face, his deformed lips twisted into a sneering smile, the stump of his left hand shaking while Tony smiled down at him, leering at him. Another word or two and he’d spring like a coiled rattlesnake.

But the next words from Tony’s mouth were apologetic. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know. I, just… well, I’m sorry.”

“No harm, no foul, brother,” Dub said. “Let’s go see the old man. Go get paid. Jesus, this is
supposed
to be a
party
.”

Teddy laughed and so did Tony. Pretty soon, all seemed to be forgotten as Dub and his gang followed Tony and the girls across the sidewalk, to the front porch, where Tony’s associate held the door open for their guests.

Antique furniture sat on the polished-maple hardwood floor of the expansive front parlor they passed through. A series of oil paintings decorated the walls, stunning portraits of old
Italy
: the rolling hills of
Tuscany
, the terra cotta rooftops of
Naples
, the canals of
Venice
. Dub knew all about them because on his first trip out the old man had made a point of dragging him into the room for some half-assed, rambling history lesson on the stomping grounds of Carlicci’s forefathers. Like Dub gave a damn about any of that shit. He’d delivered his pound of flesh and he wanted what was due him. But he’d sat patiently while the old gangster wistfully reminisced about some far off golden days the world might never see again.
And then laughed himself silly with Teddy and Bert and Ernie all the way back to town.

Groups of people occupied various rooms adjoining the long hallway they traversed, some Dub knew by name and some he’d never before laid eyes on. Down the hallway, past a staircase that led up to the second floor landing, a library on one side and a dining room on the other, they finally found their way to Carlicci’s den, an impromptu office in which the old man held court, deep within the mansion. Everyone but Tony’s pal entered the room; when they were through the entryway, he closed the door behind them.

A plush leather couch sat facing a flat screen television mounted on the wall above a fireplace on the opposite end of the room. The screen, frozen in place, depicted a young Robert De Niro carving a blade across an aging gangster’s belly. Two La-Z-Boy recliners were on either side of the sofa; a glass-topped coffee table directly in front of it. Six empty chairs sat around a Las Vegas-style card table, a few yards to the right of the coffee table. The felt-covered table was directly in front of a sliding glass door that opened up on a concrete patio at the side of the house, the card table vacant because their former occupants had gathered round a large, rectangular oak table at the far end of the room. Silverware clattered as they hunched over plates of food. The four of them, Ben, Teddy and Bert and Ernie’s counterparts, were feared and respected leaders in a broad, sweeping criminal enterprise, captains whose crews sucked the life’s blood from the municipality and kicked up to them, and they in turn kicked up to the boss, Oscar Carlicci. They barely looked up when Dub and his crew entered the room, but the leader of The Devil’s Own knew those hardened gangsters were watching them, and at the first sign of trouble the guns would come out and everyone in their path would fall.

Two guys were standing on the patio in front of a red-brick grill, looking out at a kidney-shaped swimming pool with a diving board and slide. For one scant moment, Dub wondered what they were grilling, but he didn’t have to wonder—they could all smell it in the air, the tantalizing scent of…

“My God,” Trixie gasped, eyes wide as Carlicci turned to face them. He was sitting behind a polished mahogany desk, a two-inch thick cut of prime rib on the plate in front of him. He looked nothing like the son who had just led his dark-skinned prize into the room. He was short and chubby. Wispy tufts of white hair lay haphazardly atop his head like weeds strewn about a yard. He had an inch-wide scar running along the right side of his wrinkled face, picked up decades ago as a young thug on the streets of north
Jersey
, a story he had proudly related to
Dub
the first time they’d met. Instead of a designer suit, he wore black and white Nike sweats, and a pair of white Reeboks.

Trixie drifted away from the crowd, like a dream-walker drawn straight over to the slab of steak on old man Carlicci’s plate. She looked like a homeless waif staring into the front window of a pastry shop on a cold winter’s morning.

“Well,” Carlicci said. “Aren’t you a pretty little thing?”

Trixie said nothing. She just stood there, looking down at his food.

“You like?”

Her eyes brightened. “Uh-huh,” she said.

“It’s a delicate cutta beef. Melts right in yer mouth.”

She moved closer, her feet shuffling forward as he talked, until she was right by his side.

“What would you do for a nice steak dinner like this?”

“Anything,” she said, her feet now shuffling back and forth, her hands trembling while a single tear rolled down her cheek. A lopsided smile split her face and the old man chuckled. He slid the plate closer to her. When she reached for it, he laughed and pulled it away.

“You haven’t done
anything yet
.”

Trixie dropped her bag and fell to her knees, unfastened Carlicci’s pants and he settled back into his chair, smiling. He twined a liver-spotted hand into her long blonde hair, and guided her face to his lap. “Antney,” he called out, “make our guests comfortable!” Her head bobbed up and down, and Dub thought that he might have been wrong—maybe there
were
worse things than servicing Bert and Ernie and the Q’s.

When it was over, when Trixie surfaced for air and Carlicci stood and fastened his trousers, Trixie stood up too. She glanced at the plate, picked up a fork and looked back at Carlicci, licking her lips as somebody called out, “What about us?” It was one of the four guys seated at the oak table. Hunched over his plate and chewing his food, he hadn’t even bothered looking up when he called out to her.