Author: Allison M. Dickson
Date: 2013-10-24 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Fiction; Thriller; Mystery Thriller; Suspense
Description: Allison M. Dickson presents a chilling tale of entrapment and greed. Do you have freedom? Do you have control? After four years of turning tricks in a mob-run New York brothel to pay off a debt, Nina is ready to go back to a quiet life in Iowa. Just one more client and the whole nightmare will be behind her, but this last trick turns into a battle for her soul. Meanwhile, the brothel's sadistic Madam has been hiding away money in order to move up in her family's organization, and she only wants the half million dollars the reclusive millionaire pays for the girls. But her driver Ramón has othe
Publisher: Hobbes End Publishing, LLC

STRINGS

By Allison M. Dickson

First Edition

Copyright 2013 Allison M. Dickson

Published by Hobbes End Publishing, LLC, a division of Hobbes End Entertainment, LLC

Kindle eBook Edition

All rights reserved.

Author: Allison M. Dickson

Produced by Vincent Hobbes

Cover Design: Jordan Benoit

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

www.hobbesendpublishing.com

Dedication

For Kate and Kirstin, my favorite twisted sisters

Acknowledgments

The tireless work of making a pile of hastily written words into a novel I could be proud of did not happen alone. First thanks go to Brad Finn and Liz Hill, whose enthusiasm and suggestion that my short story, “The Good Girls,” would make one hell of a novel stuck in my brain long enough to make this book come to life. I also have to thank my core support team and beta readers, Ken Dickson, Kate Jenkins, Kirstin Jewell, Vincent and Jaime Hobbes, Ian Healy, and Becky Kyle who read through perhaps the ugliest first draft in the history of first drafts and gave me the help I needed to get it polished and tell me I had something good here. Sometimes you need cheerleaders and sometimes you need taskmasters, and I’m lucky that my team is both. I have never been to Atlantic City, where a good part of this book is set (and I apologize for any egregious geographical errors), but I want to thank Jersey native and fellow author Armand Rosamilia, who after one educational phone call made me feel like I had. I also want to thank Vincent Hobbes, my dear friend and publishing liaison, who unknowingly planted the seed in my head during a late-night discussion about the effects of being a hermit, which gave birth to the original story. Thanks to Abby Miller, the submissions editor at Hobbes End who gave it her gold stamp of approval and said it would make a perfect Halloween story. Also, my undying thanks goes to the amazing team at Hobbes End Publishing for the tireless work and dedication getting this book produced from cover to interior and out into the world in record time. Thank you Jordan Benoit for making my dream cover come true, and Jairus Reddy, you crazy bastard, who read this sick sick book and liked it. His final “yes” is what made this all possible, so you can direct any ire or hate mail you might have toward him.

A Note from the Author

If the first chapter of this book feels familiar to you, that’s because it began life as a short story called “The Good Girls,” which sold a lot of copies on Amazon for about a year before I took it down in order to make room for the novel. When I originally released the story, I had no intention at the time of doing any kind of expansion, but after a couple of enthusiastic readers suggested it, I couldn’t disagree. The characters spoke to me unlike any other before, and the story pretty much fell out of me over a grueling six week period. If you weren’t previously aware of the existence of “The Good Girls,” worry not. It is mostly intact here as all of Chapter 1 and some of Chapter 2. Fun bit of trivia: the title of the first chapter, “Nina’s Last Trick,” was actually the working title of the short story before I changed it.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Junior

1                Nina’s Last Trick

2                Ramón Takes a Detour

3                Madam’s Family Ties

4                Nina Dances

5                Ramón  and the Derringer

6                Madam’s Punishment

7                Nina and the Woman in Red

8                Ramón ’s Bond

9                Madam Makes an Ally

10              Nina’s Passenger

11              Ramón  in the Nile

12              Madam in the Mirror

13              Nina’s Lesson in Purity

14              The Ballad of Jenkins

15              Ramón  and the Honey Trap

16              Madam Sacrifices Her Queen

17              Nina’s Declaration

18              Ramón  and the Madam

19              Madam and the Good Girls

20              Nina Sheds Her Burden

21              Ramón  in the Meadows

22              Madam in the Boathouse

Junior

Lady Ballas stroked her pregnant belly as she stirred Hank’s dinner, hoping the smell of beef stew would finally draw her husband out of his study. He had been cooped up in there two weeks now. Not his worst streak yet, but certainly his second-worst. Only once in those fourteen days had he opened the door to snatch one of the dozens of food trays she left out in the hallway. She brought up five trays a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks, and all of it had gone to waste except one lone meal, a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. She could imagine the amount of agony he’d gone through convincing himself to take it, not only to expose himself to the “bad air” outside his refuge, but also to eat food that had been swimming in it. He’d been on the verge of starving to death no doubt, but with just enough self-preservation left to override the madness eating away at him like a child slowly licking the icing off a cupcake before devouring it all the way down to its soft and spongy center.

Two Sundays ago, she’d been making their breakfast of poached eggs and toast when she heard the heavy maple door slam shut upstairs. She didn’t stop her cooking or even flinch. All the signs of Hank’s condition spiraling out of control again had been there for the last week. They were difficult to miss after twelve years of marriage. It always started with the constant washing of his hands until his knuckles bled and the pads of his fingers cracked open. Then the size of the laundry piles would grow from small hills into mountains as he made frequent clothing changes—six, sometimes seven, different suits and shirts and pairs of socks and underwear a day. He would also spend longer spells working from home instead of going into his office at the new Twin Towers in Manhattan. She could hear him wearing a faded path onto the heavy Oriental rug up in that cursed study as he paced back and forth, barking orders either into the phone or just to himself, which never failed to chill her bones.

There were subtler signs too, like the way his eyes flitted around the room when he spoke to her, as if he were chasing an invisible fly, or the agitation in his voice when she asked if he might like to join her on an afternoon walk and get a little fresh air. All those clues and more would build up day after day like the crescendo of a dreadful symphony until it reached its final note, the percussive slam of that office door. Silence would then flood their big, empty house and she would settle down to spend the next several days living in a void, alone but for the errant kicks and tumbles of her unborn child as she rocked herself to sleep in the newly furnished nursery.

Sometimes the reasons for Hank’s spells varied. Lady sometimes thought they coincided with the state of the bond and oil markets that comprised the bulk of their wealth. Even though she didn’t consider herself an expert in commodities, she’d come from good stock. Her father taught her how to read the newspapers and the quarterly statements that came in the mail when she was a girl. Although Hank never approved of her meddling in such matters, she nonetheless knew things were going quite well for their little trading company right now. Lady had a feeling this particular spell, the worst yet, was due to something else entirely, and it gave her a hard kick right now to remind her of its presence. She patted her swollen belly, which she rubbed with cocoa butter every night before bed.

“There there, little one. All is well.”

The baby would be here in just a month or so, and though he would never admit such a thing aloud, Hank was terrified. And it wasn’t just about potentially passing on his peculiar malady. He was also concerned with all the urine, feces, vomit, and slobber babies brought to the table. His once peaceful and immaculate abode was about to become a toxic waste dump. Lady was prepared for this and had hired the perfect nanny to assist her, a gorgeous Indian woman named Kali who exuded maternal peace and professionalism. After meeting with several candidates throughout the week, Kali was the only one who seemed truly prepared for the task, who would treat their baby like a prince, or a princess if Lady’s deep intuition was wrong. It took some convincing, to say the least. Hank didn’t want to hire a nanny at all. In fact, he tried putting his foot down about the matter in his classic blustery style two months ago when he came home to find her conducting interviews.

“I can’t believe you would consider this without consulting me first. We’ll raise our own child, and that’s final!”

But Lady wouldn’t have it. “You either let me hire a nanny to help us, or you hire someone to help you. If you don’t like that, Hank, I’ll just take the baby to my father’s and let his maid help me out.” And maybe I won’t come back either was on the tail end of that, at least in her mind, but it turned out she didn’t need to say it. Hank didn’t hate anyone on this earth but the one who had walked her down the aisle at their wedding. The two men had been professional rivals since the day Lady brought Hank home to meet him, and Hank would rather die than let old Louis McGinnis get the upper-hand.

Cajoled into submission, a rare place for Hank when he wasn’t fresh off one of his episodes, he sat down and patted her hand. “All right then, dear. You hire your help. But she doesn’t come within a hundred feet of that study when I’m in it. You tell her I have bad migraines and I can’t be disturbed. Is that clear?”

She thought so. With Kali’s help, their lives would be infinitely better and easier. Hank would never have to live in fear of his own son, and Lady would be free and clear to help her husband when his episodes came on.

After removing the rolls from the oven, she gingerly placed two of them on a plate with a pat of butter on top of each. Then she ladled out a large bowl of the stew, added a flourish of freshly chopped herbs, and set it on the tray beside the bread. Next to that she added a tall glass of milk, a tumbler of iced tea with mint, and a wedge of the apple pie she’d baked earlier that morning. The sight of the meal, Hank’s favorite since the first days of their marriage, made her own stomach gurgle, and she hoped it would work this time. It was normally her ace in the hole, the one that coaxed him to emerge most often. She tried putting it out for him late last week, but it had been too soon. She’d acted hastily, that was all. But it was with good reason. What if the baby came early and he was still in there? Even with Kali’s help, she still needed Hank. He was her rock, the reason for everything. And after all the times she had been there for him, it was time for him to return the favor. If he missed the birth of his child, she would be most displeased. The stew would work this time, she was sure of it. Men were like dowsing rods for food. It just took the right meal at the right time.

Careful to balance the heavy tray with her already off-kilter center of gravity, she carried it from the kitchen, down the long hallway, and up the winding staircase leading to Hank’s study, second door on the right. The climb was arduous for a woman in her condition, but being her husband’s part-time nursemaid kept her in good shape. Every morning, afternoon, and evening, she would carry fresh food up and then later in the evening, she would return that same food, cold and congealed, to the kitchen in which she’d cooked it. Steaming and juicy meat had become cold jerky, gravies and broths had either skinned over or gelatinized, bread fresh from the oven had grown stale and lackluster. Along with each morning meal, she left him a fresh pitcher of wash water with a basin, an unopened bar of soap, a new toothbrush with baking soda, and a razor with shave cream. She couldn’t bear the idea of her husband growing filthy, even though that’s what he did every time he locked himself away, convinced his own waste was better than the germs outside. Hank would rationalize that even in their packages the hygiene products were contaminated somehow, just like the food. Long ago, before she knew better, she tried reasoning with him that if the air and the food and everything else outside his study were poisoned, she would be dead by now, but he had an answer for that too: “You weren’t born defective like me, Lady. My skin is full of a billion tiny holes. It lets all the bad things in.”

They’d been through half a dozen doctors, all the latest and greatest in medications and psychotherapy, including shock therapy. They stopped short of a lobotomy, because Hank was worried it would leave him unable to function and provide, just as the medications had for the short time he took them. He also worried his secret would get out; there had already been rumors at the office of nervous breakdowns and possible mania. To Hank, reputation and appearances took precedence over almost everything, which explained why he permitted no one else to enter the house during his spells. There would be no doctors or nurses, not even Carla the housekeeper, who came by twice a week to help with the laundry and the vacuuming, or Barton, their driver and groundskeeper. And most certainly not Kali, who would be living here in the house the day after the baby came.

Lady had grown used to lying to the help, usually saying she and Hank were having a spontaneous holiday in Martha’s Vineyard or the Hamptons and all time off would be paid. It was doubtful they bought the lies after awhile, but they were professionals and never raised a fuss about it. She hoped Kali would be as elegant about the situation, should she come to find out about Hank’s condition.

Over the years, Lady studied nurse’s textbooks and other manuals on caregiving in order to be as helpful to her husband as possible after he emerged from one of his episodes. She learned how to help him to the bathroom, to take his rectal temperature and other vital signs, to deliver the proper nutrition, and help with calisthenics to build up his strength again. Hank had even rigged up a series of ropes and pulleys around the house in order to make it easier for her to move him around until he regained his strength. He would also use them himself when she was unavailable. After a couple of weeks, he was usually functional again. It was a team effort.

It wasn’t always this bad, of course. If it were, Lady was sure she would have called for her father to swoop in and rescue her years ago. These little fits were like rare blizzards they weathered together in secret. She wouldn’t be pregnant right now with Hank’s child otherwise. Perhaps this was as bad as it would ever get, Hank getting this out of his system once and for all, giving birth to this demon of his in much the same way she would be giving birth to their son in just a few weeks. When Hank Junior entered the world, things would be different. Good, even. She intended to see it that way and no other.

Lady set down the tray outside the door and knocked, her heart full of hope. “Hank? I made your favorite, darling. Beef stew.”

No answer. He was likely asleep. He wouldn’t have energy for much else by this point.

She knocked again, this time a little harder, and proceeded to wait amid the other untouched trays she’d brought up this morning. One with an omelet turned to rubber, another with a now limp BLT sandwich and potato chips. And still the untouched soap and water. He probably smelled like a grave by now. Still no sign of life from inside the study. Now that was a little odd. Questions started filtering into her mind.

Wasn’t it getting a bit worse every time? Weren’t the episodes becoming longer and a bit more frequent, his overall condition weaker? He was like a rubber band stretched out too many times and no longer able to assume its original shape. When he came out last time after nearly a month, he was withered down to skin-covered bone. His heartbeat, weak and uncertain, reminded Lady of a terrified little bird, flutter-flutter-flutter.  She’d been nearly three months pregnant at that point and still fighting awful morning sickness, but she worked feverishly to bring him around, first administering a tiny pill of nitroglycerin and then spending several painstaking hours giving him sips of water and broth. At that point, she was about to give up and call their doctor. Hank didn’t need light nursing. He needed a hospital and IV fluids. But Hank, who knew her better than anybody and could almost read her thoughts, grabbed her by the wrist with his bird-like talon of a hand, the grip stronger than his overall frailty suggested. His eyes reminded her of eggs sizzling on a hot sidewalk.

“No doctors. Remember our promise, Lady. Remember.”

He squeezed her wrist until it hurt and she finally nodded, understanding if he had the strength to do that maybe he wasn’t as close to death as she thought. He recovered, eventually, but she told herself that was the last time she was going to let him have his way about things. They’d made a promise, but promises could be broken after a certain point. If he came out of the room this time in the same condition or worse, she was going to call the hospital and have them send an ambulance. If he had a problem with it, he could get up and come after her. She was too damn big and unwieldy with this belly of hers to be Super Nurse this time.

She gave the door another knock, firmer this time. “Hank? Come on, now. At least grunt if you can hear me.” Lady pressed her ear to the door, trying to detect even the faintest movement or shuffle. Nothing.

A phantom voice, almost taunting, rose up in her mind: He’s dead.

No. Absolutely not. Hank’s silence wasn’t all that unusual. After twelve years of marriage and nearly twice that number of these odd episodes, she’d seen and dealt with far worse than him ignoring her when she knocked. Like when he would go into one of his ranting spells, screaming obscenities so bald and disgusting she was convinced her otherwise sweet and gregarious husband had been possessed by a devil. Years later some of those words still haunted her. Go away, bitch! I’ll stab your cunt!

And then there was the time he opened the door and threw a bottle of his urine in her face. Worse than the tangy warmth of her husband’s warm piss going up her nose and running down her cheeks was the wild and almost menacing look in his eyes. That hadn’t been her husband, she was certain. Her Hank never would have done something so . . . vile. But what could he be doing behind that door right now? She didn’t want him to be angry with her for knocking again, but his silence was beginning to worry her.

A sharp cramp drew her belly taut and she braced herself against the door to keep from doubling over. No. Not now. Please not right now. “Hush, little baby,” she murmured and rubbed her hardening belly. The pain wrapped around her like a hot cummerbund and she fell against the door. She started pounding with both fists. “Hank! Please open the door! The baby . . . I think he’s coming.”

A distinct shuffling came from inside the study and her mind brightened. Oh thank God! I couldn’t coax him out with stew or just plain begging, but at least he’ll react for the birth of his son. The lock disengaged from the inside and the heavy maple door opened a crack to reveal candlelight and a distinct but familiar odor of sweat and bodily waste. But she couldn’t see Hank in there. A trickle of fear dripped down from her heart and burned in her gut. Another contraction followed, but she felt it only distantly compared to her mounting worry.

“Hank? What are you doing in there?”

A shaky whisper issued through the crack. “Come in, darling. Come see what I’ve done. It’s glorious.”

But she didn’t want to go in there. Hank had never invited her into his study like this, and she couldn’t blame him. It would be like inviting someone into the darkest corner of your mind, where every passing thought of murder and revenge and madness gathered like dust bunnies with teeth. “Sweetie, not now. I need you to come out. The baby—”

“Fuck the baby! Come in here now!” His voice cracked under the strain. Then, softly, almost a whimper: “Please, Lady. I need you.”

Lady’s world broke into prisms as the tears spilled over. He’s lost it, she thought. Gone mad. It had only been a matter of time. The doctors all warned them it might come to this one day if he didn’t get the lobotomy or stay on the medication, but neither of them wanted to listen or believe. They thought they could manage it, and they’d done quite well at it for a while. She had to call the doctors, though. Hank’s first, then hers. Oh, this was not how she wanted things. Not at all.

She backed away from the door and hit something that grunted. Lady shouted and turned around to see Kali standing there in a sari the color of blood. Another contraction rushed forward, and this one obliterated all shock at seeing the nanny she’d hired, unexpected. Uninvited. She felt a pop and warm fluid gushed down her legs, pattering on the expensive rug.

“Kali, help me!” she cried, no longer questioning why the woman was there, only needing the help of someone who hadn’t gone crazy.

“Do not worry, Mrs. Ballas. Your husband called me here. I will care for your son.”

“What? Called you? I don’t understand. He—”

Another contraction doubled her over. The pain was constant now and excruciating. World-eating. She had no idea it would hurt this badly, or that it would make her unable to truly grasp the horrible implications in Kali’s words. I will care for your son. What did that mean? Had the whole world gone mad or was it just her?

“Take me to the hospital, Kali. He’s coming. I can feel it.”

Kali’s eyes, which had been so warm at their meeting, were now like unyielding black stone. “There is no time. We must do it here.” She took Lady by the wrists and started guiding her toward Hank’s office, pushing the door open to reveal the menagerie of lit candles on nearly every horizontal surface. Terror was an icicle through her belly. “What are you doing? Kali, no!”

Another contraction. This one buckled her knees, making her certain her stomach was going to split down the middle like a rotten melon. She hit the rug, immediately smelling piss. A lot of it. The sensation of dampness on her hands soon followed and she realized this was Hank’s toilet. He’d been peeing on the carpet like an untrained animal for days. This was not like him. Not at all. Hank had never been so . . . unsanitary. What she saw next, however, obliterated all other thoughts, even the pain, at least briefly. Illuminated by candlelight were the ropes, presumably from the pulleys Hank had installed to help her lift and move him when he was too weak to help himself. He’d strung them up near the ceiling, from wall to wall like a web. He hung from the middle of the network by his ankles, swinging back and forth. Naked, emaciated, and pale like an albino spider.

“Hank? My God, what is this? What happened?”

“I found the source of all the filth, darling. The floor! I no longer have to touch it! Isn’t that wonderful? I’ve never felt more free!” He spread his arms open, letting out a harsh cacophony of laughter that echoed off the wooden walls and belied the presence of any sanity.

The next contraction was like an ax to the gut and she fell forward as if praying to Allah, pressing her forehead into the urine-soaked rug. She had never before experienced labor, but instinctively knew there was something more to this pain. Something dangerous. More warm fluid ran down her legs and she felt something stick into her neck, like a bee sting. She looked up to see Kali holding a syringe.

“What is that?” Already she felt her body going limp and numb. The pain of her labor was still there, but growing further away as whatever drug Kali had injected her with went quickly to her brain.

“Something to dull your pain, dear,” she said.

Kali gently rolled her over onto her back and she was greeted by the sight of her husband’s face hanging several feet above hers. His eyes were glassy and insane and hungry. The drugs did nothing to alleviate the stench of his waste or her fear of that leering grin gleaming in the candlelight. Lady’s mind began to detach like a blimp from its mooring.

“You are bleeding very heavily, Lady. We must move fast.”

This couldn’t be happening. Her baby coming too soon, maybe even dying, her husband no longer her husband, barely even human by the look of him. “No, get my doctor! Call an ambulance. I need a hospital.” Her tongue felt thick and stupid in her mouth. The words fell off it like logs.

“There is too much blood. Neither you nor the baby would make it,” Kali said. The crimson sari hooded the woman’s face, but Lady could see the whites of her eyes with their coal irises, and they were not the warm, maternal ones from the nanny interview. They were cold and driven, like those of a woman whose long laid plans were on the verge of fruition. “We must take him out right away.”

“Yes, cut it out! Release the filth! Release it!” Hank cried. Or at least the ghoul that used to be Hank.

Lady heard a metallic scrape and a shiny blade gleamed in the dimness, but Kali’s movement was too swift and Lady’s medicated brain was too slow to make a connection between the blade and the woman’s intentions until the eight-inches of curved steel came back up again lacquered with blood. And then, finally, the pain flooded in, overriding the drugs and bringing the certainty that her belly had been ripped apart and set ablaze. The agony made the contractions seem almost quaint. Every system in her body began misfiring. Her vision doubled and then trebled, her ears began to ring, and her skin flushed with the jabs of a million searing needle points as Kali dug around inside her for what felt like hours but must have only been minutes. The pain was so enormous, even with the drugs, it seemed almost separate from her, like a vivid nightmare she was watching happen to someone else. Perhaps all the stress was bringing on a hallucination. And the laughing, pendulous ghoul overhead . . . it couldn’t be Hank. He must have left his study earlier, perhaps to get some fresh air, and this loon slipped in through the window.

But even then she didn’t realize the truth of the agony, the horrible and oh-so-personal robbery taking place, until the room filled with the high-pitched squeals of what could only be her baby.

“It is a boy, Lady. Congratulations,” said Kali, her voice shaking.

He was tiny and so very thin and pale in the woman’s hands. A gooey mixture of blood and amniotic fluid dripped from his gangly white limbs. Something was wrong with him. Lady could sense it not only in the way the child’s skin seemed gelatinous and translucent, or how his tiny ears came to points, or the way his skull looked lumpy and badly formed. It was in Kali’s face, dawning with horror as she glanced down at the newborn.

“What is it?” Lady heard herself ask, though from a distance as the world began to gray around the edges. She was no longer cognizant of her own body being butchered open. Her mind was on her child. “What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong with my baby?”

Slow regret and terror filled Kali’s eyes. “I . . . I’m so sorry, Mrs. Ballas.” She turned the child around so Lady could look upon his face. Terror sucked the air from her lungs and reality shrank to the size of a pinpoint as she screamed at the thing—no, the monster—that had been living in her womb all these months.

“What is it? Oh my dear God what is it?” The abomination began to scream too as Hank screeched more laughter overhead. The eye is so huge, she thought, and it was the last clear thought Lady had as she grabbed onto the encroaching darkness like a life raft and let it carry her away to oblivion.

Chapter 1

Nina’s Last Trick

She sat before the Madam’s desk, legs crossed, hands clasped in her lap, chin pointed toward her chest. The position was more demure than her job usually demanded, but the Madam of the Weeping Willow frightened her. Maybe it was the woman’s hair, a flame-red nest of curls threaded with silver, or the hard red slash of her mouth set in flesh that resembled carved ivory. Mostly, Nina thought, it was those chipped diamond eyes. They reminded her of the frost that formed around the inside edges of her room’s window during the winter months. The Madam kept her own office nice and toasty, but she was a miser with the heat in the rest of the house; you just had to fuck harder if you wanted to stay warm.

It was her second time in this room. The first was four years ago, with her face puffy and well on its way to purple in the places Victor Cassini’s thugs used their fists. She’d sat in this very same chair, soaked through with the late autumn rain and shivering, partly from being cold and wet but mostly from her mad craving for a fix. From that night on, she hadn’t taken anything stronger than the generic aspirin the Madam sparingly doled out to the girls if they were sore from a particularly rough client. Nina’s junkie days were now little more than a nebulous collection of memories replaced by events far more demeaning and sinister. Sweaty ball sacks, calloused hands, ugly and desperate men. But the Madam offered Nina a second chance at life, and anything less than effusive gratitude for that was punishable by the Madam’s own particular brand of torment. Nina had a few scars to prove it.

She hadn’t been alert enough on that long ago night to examine the Madam’s inner sanctum in much detail, but she got a good look now, and what she saw soured her stomach. Oil paintings of nude men and women in erotic poses dominated the space. The one hanging directly behind the Madam’s desk depicted a man’s naked back and buttocks in stark relief as he plowed into the wide-eyed redheaded mistress below him, his hands gripping her wrists like fleshy handcuffs. The artist might have intended for her to look lost in ecstasy, but the girl’s mood came off more as frightened, non-consenting. Nina shuddered with a chill, despite the fire roaring in the room’s enormous fireplace.

She could barely detect the house’s perpetual salty reek of sex and sweat in here; the Madam attempted to cover it up with some sort of woodsy incense or potpourri. The deep red paint on the walls reminded Nina of the times clients would pay extra to get rough with her. But none were as rough as the Madam, who was now sitting on the opposite side of a mile-wide mahogany desk, looking at her like a farmer sizing up a hog before the slaughter.

“How are things, Nina darling? You look healthy.” Her voice was a seductive purr that snaked around Nina’s head like wisps of cigarette smoke. It was easy to be seduced by that voice, lulled into complacency, but Nina knew all the rules of the Madam’s predatory game, so she stayed on her guard.

How were things, anyway? Well, she was about as happy and healthy as an indentured sex servant could be, but she would never say such a thing aloud. She had nearly been another dead junkie at the bottom of the harbor four years ago, and she was one or two wisecracks away from becoming one now. The only reason she was even at the Willow was because a made guy in the Cassini crime family liked the way her tits looked when she was tied to a chair. And she’d been tied to said chair because that same made guy caught her and her boyfriend robbing one of the family’s smuggling warehouses in Queens.

It was all Joey’s plan. He was a runner for some low-level crooks in Jersey who knew about a cash drop coming in that night, and he was sure they could pull it off, pay off their dealer, and earn a little more favor with the local capo. Stealing from the mob had never been part of Nina’s Great Life Plan when she stepped off the bus with the dust of Des Moines still in her hair and the lights of Broadway in her eyes. Becoming a drug addict and the girlfriend of a Sopranos wannabe had also not been part of the plan, but she managed both of those within the first six months. It was a real achievement, even with her family’s lowlife pedigree. The best her mother, the unflappable Janie Quick, could manage was working for under the table wages at a local greasy spoon while collecting disability checks.

Joey had been the catalyst for all of it, though. They met while she was dancing at a shitty club in Red Hook. After that, she stopped working altogether and fell into his crowd. Nights filled with sex and rails of coke in a tiny room—which was actually a walk-in closet in a rundown Brooklyn loft where six other guys lived—where a lamp and a deflated air mattress were his only worldly possessions. He was so very “New York,” with his scruffy hair, his east-coast accent and swagger, and she was so hooked, both on the drugs and on him, he could have convinced her to fly to Rome and rob the Vatican. But now he was dead and she was stuck here in some limbo between prison and death. She would have preferred either.

“Nina, dear?” The Madam snapped her fingers. “Are you still with me? I hope I’m not boring you.”

Nina gave her head a little shake. Bad time to fall into a daydream. “Sorry. I was just thinking about the last few years, I guess. I’m doing all right, though.”

The Madam smiled, and Nina’s stomach curdled a little. Some faces just weren’t meant for smiles, and when the Madam did it, she looked like an alligator in a human suit.

“I’m happy to hear it. And the clients have been quite generous in their opinions of you. Money talks, and your receipts have told me all I’ve needed to know. You’re a real asset here at the Weeping Willow, which makes me almost regret to say that you’ve nearly reached the end of your tenure here.”

Feeling like someone loosened an overly tight corset around her midsection, Nina let out an audible sigh. “That’s great, Madam. Really, thank you.” She’d known this time was coming, had been paying very close attention to the math ever since she started opening her legs here, but she was afraid to hope. In the movies, you never got away from the mob. The game was rigged every single time. But these people operated a little more legitimately, she supposed. Business was business, and far less interesting than the movies. She’d more than earned back what she’d taken, and now it was almost time to go home. If someone told her five years ago that she would yearn for the sight of Des Moines and the inside of her mother’s old trailer, she would have laughed and then snorted another line or two.

“I’ve put in a word with Victor about your status here,” the Madam said. “You’ve nearly paid your debt to him, and you’ll be free to go your own way soon, your name wiped clean from his ledger. But allow me to be frank, Nina dear. I’d rather you didn’t go. We’ve all come to appreciate your talents here. I would make it worth your while with the compensation, of course. You would make twice your current income, and I would give you a larger room. But most importantly, you would stay out of the trouble that brought you here.”

Stay here? The idea sounded so absurd she nearly snickered, but that would have been suicidal in her current company. Nina knew she wasn’t the first to receive such an offer. Most of the girls who lived and worked at the Willow continued doing so long after they were solvent. They were institutionalized hookers with nowhere else to go. But Nina wasn’t like that. Compared to the abuse, homelessness, and drug problems a lot of the Willow girls came from, her home life had been like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. It maybe lacked a little in warmth—Janie Quick was never the doting type, and the lupus only made her worse over the years. There had never been enough money, but none of that mattered now.

She’d once felt a little like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, who wanted more than anything to leave her boring Kansas farm, but who only ended up making a few weird friends before being chased through a strange country by a wicked witch. Except Nina’s Oz had been a labyrinth of New York’s finest bottom-feeders, and her wicked witch was a white powder she snorted up her nose. Now she was just tired, wrung-out after years of “service,” and the only thing she craved now was the mundane. It was time to click her heels and get the hell out of here.

Once she got home, she would go to work at the same diner where her mother worked. Apparently, Janie Quick arranged it ahead of time and everything. That the bitter old woman was even willing to have her daughter back was something of a miracle. All Nina had to do now was get on a bus and go back the way she came. But she didn’t want to spoil the good will of the notoriously brutal Madam, who had once ripped off a nineteen-year-old Latina girl’s fingernails for stashing away an extra twenty dollars in tips under her mattress.

“I appreciate your offer,” Nina said. “I would like to think about it, though.” She had no intention of doing any such thing, but she wanted to divert the issue for now and hopefully keep her fingernails.

The Madam leaned forward, the sleeves of her black satin robe pooling on the old-fashioned blotter like ink. “I know you hear what I’m saying, but I don’t think you’re listening. I have a reputation for turning wayward young girls into whores, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I save them. I saved you. Victor Cassini’s men brought you here with enough Peruvian flake up your nose to powder a dozen donuts if you sneezed, and you had a debt that would make a Wall Street banker blush. Now look at you. You’re off the drugs. You’ve never looked better, and after just a few years, you’ve earned enough to satisfy the most ruthless mobster on the East Coast who had every right to kill you for what you did, and all you had to do was lie on your back and work what the Lord gave you. Out there,” she waved an alabaster hand at the window behind her, “you’re on your own. If you get into trouble again, I won’t be able to take you back. Once you’re out, you’re out. I’m a one-time deal, and the girls here know it. It’s why most of them haven’t left.”

The Madam pulled a cigarette out of the silver case on her desk and lit it. The self-satisfied bliss on her face as she took the first drag reminded Nina of a john soaking in the sweaty afterglow of his conquest while his freshly shed condom lay between them like a deflated fish.

That image, seen so many times over the years in so many variations, galvanized Nina’s original decision to leave. “I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, and the mercies you’ve given. I’m grateful to be alive, most of all, and I owe that to you.” Bile burned the back of her throat as she said those words, but they would pacify the horrible bitch, and that’s all Nina wanted. “But I have to go home. My mother is unwell, and she is waiting for me.” At least that much was true.

The mood in the room turned glacial as the Madam sat as silent and motionless as a stone idol. That invisible corset tightened around Nina’s midsection again, cutting off her breath. Gruesome images of her punishment and the number of years the Madam would add to her sentence flew through her head. Maybe it was like the movies, after all. They would keep dangling the tasty carrot of freedom just out of reach so she would work harder and make them more money, but they would never let her go, not while she was still physically able to work.

She swallowed back the tears that wanted to rush forth, knowing if the Madam saw them, the game really would be over. Crying was severely frowned upon at the Weeping Willow. “I’m sorry, Madam, I didn’t mean to—”

The Madam raised a hand, and just like that, glaciers were gone from her eyes. Nina wondered if she’d imagined them. “Don’t worry yourself, dear. When your time is up, you’re free to go, and I won’t stop you. In fact, you’ve always been free to go. This isn’t a prison. You know that.”

Yeah, sure. There might not be any bars or locks on the place, but it was no less a prison, and everyone here knew that.

“Now, you do have the option to remain here for one more month to work off the remainder of your balance,” said the Madam. “Or you can take on a special assignment for one of our oldest clients. The money would pay off the family in full as well as give you a small nest egg to take back with you to Iowa. You could be on a plane riding first class back to your mommy dearest and the smell of corn and cow shit by this time tomorrow. What do you say?”

Now it was Nina’s turn to stare. There was more to this. Had to be.

“What’s the catch?”

The wrinkles around the Madam’s eyes deepened as she grinned. “The client is a little on the eccentric side. His name’s Hank Ballas, a reclusive billionaire who’s been holed up in his upstate home longer than you’ve been alive. Once or twice a year, he calls on us to send one of our best girls for a night of companionship. And his compensation has always been quite generous.”

“How much?” Nina asked, curious despite her unease.

“Half a million dollars. Sometimes a little more, if he likes the girl. I think he’ll really like you.”

Nina’s jaw dropped open, and the Madam’s smug grin returned.

“Of course, after we pay off the Cassinis and the Weeping Willow takes its cut, this will leave you with about, oh, seventy grand, but that’s far more than you’ve made in your best month here. It should get you settled nicely into your pastoral new life.”

She quickly did the math in her head. The house was taking far more off the top than the standard seventy percent. She wanted to fight that, bargain for more, but that’s not how things worked at the Willow. You took what you got or you got nothing. Seventy grand for one night with a strange hermit seemed more than fair. He probably wouldn’t even want to have sex. She’d seen the type a few times over the years, and they mostly wanted to talk and cuddle. A few of them just touched her tits while they jerked off. Oddly, the ones who didn’t want sex paid more, like they felt guilty for not subjecting a prostitute to the debasement of her actual job. But, even if she did have to fuck him, it would be one last trick. He could be the most repugnant and filthy man alive, but she would do it if it meant her freedom.

“Okay. I’m in.”

The Madam’s eyes sparkled. “Very well. Go get yourself ready. I’ll have Ramón pull the car around. By the way, don’t overdo it on the hair and makeup. He likes his girls to look virginal.”

Nina nodded and stood up. Maybe this would work, after all. The thought of going home tomorrow almost made her want to hug the woman, but she wouldn’t push it.

“Thank you again, Madam.”

This time, she didn’t smile. “Don’t thank me yet.”

***

A half-hour later, Nina ducked into the back of the Town Car as Ramón, the Willow’s driver, held open the door.

“You’re gonna be cold in that, you know,” he said. “Want to get a sweater?”

Nina grinned. The nights were starting to get too cold for sleeveless white dresses, but most hookers, even the high-end ones, didn’t usually dress for the weather. She was used to Ramón acting like a concerned parent.

“I’ll be fine, thanks. I’m used to being naked in the cold.” Though she wouldn’t have to be for much longer.

All the girls loved Ramón, probably because most of them didn’t have fathers and he was the closest thing the Willow offered to one. His humor came in the form of knee-slappers that made most people groan, but they all laughed because his cheer was contagious. He usually kept quiet with the girls when the Madam was within earshot, but once he had them alone, he was likely to bust out with something like, “What’s a frog’s favorite drink? Croaka-Cola. Get it? Get it?” Then he’d throw back his head and laugh like it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard.

Tonight, there was no humor in his face. Instead, he looked old and sad. Nina guessed he was probably in his fifties, but now he looked old enough to be her grandfather. After closing her door, he walked around to get in behind the wheel. For a moment, he just sat there and let the engine run. Nina thought he was listening to one of the sports games he always played on the radio, but then he put the car into gear, and they were off without a word.

She rode in unaccustomed silence for twenty minutes. Normally by now, Ramón would be sharing some new story about his son Alejandro in Jersey or talking about how his ex-wife was a whiskey maker, but he loved her still. Get it? Get it? But he remained silent, his hands gripping the wheel in a stiff ten o’clock-two o’clock, and Nina was starting to get nervous.

They stopped at a red light and Ramón turned around in his seat. “Look, I know where I’m supposed to take you, but I just think you should know . . . I ain’t happy about it.”

Nina’s sense of dread mounted. Ramón had driven her to dozens of clients over the years, and this was the first time he’d raised a real objection to any of them.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I knew when the Madam called me tonight that I’d be driving to the Ballas place upstate. I knew even before I answered the phone. I make this drive twice a year, sometimes three, and it was just about that time.” The car behind them honked, and Ramón turned back around to continue through the green light. Nina leaned forward so she could keep talking to him.

“Who is this guy? I’m sure I’ve heard the name, but I can’t really place it.”

“That’s the thing, see? No one really knows. He made all his money in oil and stocks a long time ago, I guess. Folks say he ain’t been outside in over twenty years. Maybe more. I heard he was some kinda germ phobe who lost his mind after his wife disappeared. Kinda like Howard Hughes. You know who he is?”

Nina nodded. Joey had been a real movie nut, and he particularly loved anything by Martin Scorsese, so she’d seen The Aviator at least five or six times. She imagined bottles of urine sitting on every available surface and piles of garbage stacked several feet high, almost certainly infested with roaches. And in the middle of it all, an emaciated man with a beard halfway down his chest, his teeth rotted out, his skin pale and translucent from the lack of sunlight. Nina shook off a chill.

Of course, Hank Ballas didn’t necessarily have to be that way. Not all hermit types were filthy as a rule, and a man rich enough to pay half a million bucks for a roll in the hay certainly had a staff of people to take care of him.

“You said his wife disappeared. What happened to her?”

Ramón shrugged. “Her name was Lady. She was about nine months pregnant when she vanished. No one ever found her or a body. Some say she wanted to get away from Ballas because he had a nervous breakdown, but her rich parents didn’t ever hear from her again either, so most folks think someone got away with murder.”

“Like Hank Ballas?”

He shrugged again. “If he did anything wrong, no one could prove it, but he stopped going out in public after that.”

Finally, she asked the only thing that made sense. “Is he dangerous? Does he hurt the girls? Is that why you don’t like us going there?”

Ramón  didn’t speak for a few minutes and Nina was about to ask again when he answered. “Every girl who ever came out of that house had to be carried. You remember Rosie, don’t you?”

“Oh God,” she whispered. How could she forget Rosie? Of course, she hadn’t really known the little Puerto Rican girl very well, but it was about three weeks after Nina arrived at the Willow that she walked into the second-floor bathroom to find the girl lying on the floor in a wide puddle of blood, her forearms sliced to ribbons. “I was the one who found her.”

Ramón nodded, like he remembered too. “Not long before you came to the Willow, she took the same ride you’re taking now. You notice how she was a little quiet? A little off? And it wasn’t just her. Melinda is another one you probably know.”

Nina did. Both girls drifted around the house like silent and pale wraiths while they were still around. Neither of them took many clients, and that was never a good thing if your primary residence was a brothel. There were others, too, who seemed . . . shell-shocked, Nina guessed. They had funny hitches in their steps, muttered to themselves a lot. They would jump if you touched them. Nina assumed it was drugs. Most of the girls in the house were former addicts.

“These girls saw this client and came out like that?”

“Yep. And there’ve been a lot more that you haven’t seen,” Ramón said. “They were good girls. Most of them were a little simple and probably wouldn’t have amounted to much anyway, but they had some spark in them. Melinda had a decent upbringing before she fell into drugs and wound up at the Willow. She played the violin, and sometimes she’d break it out in the morning and play a little if the Madam was gone. It was the sweetest sound you’d ever hear. I thought she really had a chance of getting out and making something of herself. Like you. But, one night the Madam told me to take Melinda up to see Hank Ballas, and I knew I’d never hear that violin again. Last time I saw her, I was stopping in the kitchen for a cup of coffee after bringing a couple other girls home, and there she was sitting at the table, eating a bowl of cereal, staring straight ahead while milk dripped down her chin and wetted her shirt. Just shoveling in soggy Corn Flakes like her arm was attached to strings and some invisible man was pulling them.” Ramón shook his head as if to break the image apart. “Then she was gone, like all the rest. Eventually the Madam sends them away somewhere. I think it’s because they can’t earn any more, but I think it’s also so they don’t scare the other girls.”

Nina sat back in her seat, her stomach fluttering. This was the first time she’d heard anything about this since she’d been at the Willow, but then again, she always kept to herself. It was an unspoken house rule that the girls didn’t get too close to one another, because—at least in Nina’s mind—the Madam didn’t want them gossiping and forming an alliance. She did this by forcing them to compete with one another for clients, and sometimes by punishing one girl for the actions of another. For instance, one girl lost her blankets and bed sheets for a week because another one drank more than her share of the milk. It was stupid stuff, but it was all part of the Madam’s plan to maintain control over her flock by keeping the girls from ever really liking each other.

Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. She could go back to the Willow and just tell the Madam she’d work for the rest of the month. No need to be hasty, right? She’d done it this long. Nina noticed the vehicle moving over to the side of the road and slowing to a stop.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Ramón put the car into park and turned around. She could only see his face illuminated in the headlights of passing cars. His eyes were wide, sad pools that seemed to take up most of his face.

“I’m giving you the chance to get out now. You can hit me over the head to make it look like a real getaway. I got some cash in my wallet that’s yours for the taking. Run to the bus station three miles behind us and get a ticket to anywhere but here. No one will know you’re gone for a few hours yet, and by then you’d be home free.”

His offer was like a siren song. It would be so easy to do. Just run and forget all this. She thought of Ramón’s story about the girl Melinda stuffing soggy cereal in her gob like some puppet, and shivered. That could be her. That’s what he was saying. What in the world was at this Ballas man’s house that could do something like that to so many women, and did she really want to find out?  The Madam knew exactly what she was sending Nina to, and now she understood why the woman had looked at her so coldly when she turned down the offer to stay. The bitch had no intention of letting her go home with a nice little nest egg. This was a disposal operation, plain and simple.

But just like the siren song of myth, Ramón’s offer was equal parts tantalizing and lethal. If she ran, she would be able to survive for maybe a week on the money he gave her. The following week, she’d be living under a bridge turning tricks again, and probably back on the drugs, all while Victor Casinni’s men tortured her mother for information she didn’t have. Maybe there was another way . . .

“I have a question,” she said. “The payment. Is it done electronically or does he pay cash?” Of course, that was a stupid question. It would be electronic. Most transactions were by credit card these days, especially for a sum so large, but then again, Ballas was a hermit. Maybe he hated banks and other electronic things.

“Cash money, delivered directly to the Madam by yours truly. The man doesn’t do banks. Also doesn’t do phones. When he wants a girl, he sends a letter. It’s all very strange. Probably keeps all his money in a mattress.”

Nina blinked. Must be a big goddamn mattress. She imagined Scrooge McDuck swimming in his mountain of gold coins. “Okay, how about this? I do the job, but instead of delivering the money to the Madam, we take it and both run. Hit the road, pick up our families and go away somewhere far away. Mexico, maybe. We could stretch the money far down there.”

Ramón shook his head. “It’s not that easy. The Madam expects us back at a very specific time. And I’m also very sure either she or the Cassinis have people watching us. Their network is wide and tight. She doesn’t send me up here as a matter of trust. She doesn’t trust anybody.”

This knowledge deflated her a little, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet. “We can find ways around all that. Ditch the car and the clothes immediately and buy some disguises. Turn the money into traveler’s checks or find someone to help us launder it. You have to know people from your previous life who can do these things.”

“You don’t know nothing about my old life, senorita. And trust me, you don’t want to know.” This wasn’t the voice of the joking grandfatherly man she’d come to know over the last few years. She’d dug deep enough to hit steel, and the sparks were in his eyes.

She bowed her head, not wanting to anger him further. “I’m sorry. It’s just that it seems so . . . possible.”

“I’ll tell you what’s possible. You going into that house and coming out a lifeless rag doll. Why do you think he pays so much? It’s supposed to make up for the Madam’s lost earnings with a little left over.”

Nina looked up at him, suddenly filled with a burning anger. “Then that’s all the more reason I should go in there, do this job, and take that money. We’ll get the hell out of here, no matter the cost. Let’s not give that bitch one more red cent! I can deal with whatever that guy throws my way if it means I never have to go back to the Willow.”

“You won’t be the same. Remember, the others—”

“Look,” Nina held up her hand, “Those girls aren’t me. I refuse to believe they were all turned into zombies after fucking a dirty old hermit. There was something wrong with those girls already.” You’re rationalizing it, she thought. You don’t know that at all.

That much was true. She was making assumptions. The fact that she was planning to do the very thing that had landed her into all this trouble with the Cassini family to begin with—stealing their money—was also not lost on her, and if she got caught, there would be no mercy this time. They would kill her, flat out. But they wouldn’t get caught. With that kind of money, they could buy a true escape, and the only thing standing in her way was a fuck session with an old lunatic. She did that every day, and she was used to closing off her mind during the act, particularly with the ones who smelled like they hadn’t showered in months. There was a reason most of these men paid for sex.

“Even if you were right about the girls, and you’re not, we would be taking a huge risk,” Ramón said. “They’ll hunt us until we’re dead. These people don’t stop. Victor Cassini, he never forgets. I’ve been doing this job thirteen years for a reason, and it ain’t because I like the pay.”

She didn’t know a lot about how Ramón got this job, only that he’d mentioned his “old life” a few times in reference to some bad things he’d done. Like all of them at the Willow, except maybe the Madam and even then Nina couldn’t be completely sure, he was working for the Cassinis under duress. “I understand what you mean,” she said. “You’re stuck in the web just like the rest of us and you’re afraid to try to escape, but we have the upper-hand this time. They expect us to keep doing as we’re told because they’re holding the things we care about for ransom, but that also means we have room to surprise them.”

Ramón gazed down at the seat for a few minutes, deep in thought. Finally, he sighed and rubbed his face with one gloved hand. “Maybe you’re right.”

Nina smiled. “Good.”

“Maybe while you’re in there, I’ll go and get a few things from my place and then come back and wait for you. Is there anything you need from your room?”

Nina shook her head. The Madam forced her to give up anything sentimental long ago. Another house rule. Her mother’s locket, pictures of her and Joey on their first trip to Atlantic City. All of it went into a box and she had no idea whether the Madam kept these things or burned them. Anything left in her room was property of the Weeping Willow, and the bitch in charge could keep it all for souvenirs as far as Nina was concerned. The purse she carried had a few toiletry items she used for cleaning up after jobs. Wet wipes, toothbrush, deodorant, perfume. She did have a state I.D. at least. No cash, but she was about to solve that little problem. She could buy anything else she needed once they were a good distance away. “Get what you need for yourself, but don’t linger,” she said. “We’ll stock up once we’re on the road.”

“You sound like you’ve done this before,” he said.

Nina shrugged. “I’m well-practiced at running away.”

“I still don’t like the idea of you going in there. I mean, something in there got at them other girls and hurt them bad. If you just run now like I’m saying, you’ll avoid all that.”

She leaned forward and placed her hand on his arm. “Nothing is going to get to me in there. I promise you.” And yet, the image of Rosie’s dead eyes stuck with Nina, stroking her doubt.

***

About an hour later, Ramón pulled the Town Car up to a rusted iron gate covered in twists of yellowing ivy. The house hunched deep in shadows that even the car’s high-beam headlights couldn’t quite cut through. Nina’s anxiety kicked up a notch.

Knock it off, she scolded herself. Tree branches arched over the driveway, reminding her of skeletal arms. There weren’t very many leaves on those trees, and it was only mid-September. Still a little too early for them to drop, but then again it didn’t seem like anyone had maintained the estate grounds since the Clinton era. She imagined the proprietor inside might not be much better.

Ramón pushed aside a few strands of dead ivy and pressed the CALL button. The dusty box didn’t look like it would even work, but a few seconds later, the gate parted with a loud screech, and he guided the car into the inky gloom ahead. The headlights did little to pacify her mounting sense of dread. The vegetation flanking both sides of the narrow and cracked blacktop were all dead or in various stages of dying. Ramón steered around potholes with a well-practiced grace. He slammed on the brakes a moment later, and Nina looked up to see an enormous white possum sitting in front of them. Its pointed snout parted, revealing a mass of needle sharp teeth. Instead of running, it sat up on its hind legs and glared at them with red eyes.

Wait. Red eyes? She’d seen a lot of possums growing up in the sticks, but never one that was all white or had red eyes. But then she realized it was albino. Rare, but not exactly supernatural. It didn’t look very frightened or interested in running. In fact, it started walking toward them, and Nina cringed as if it might somehow jump through the windshield to get at them.

“Go!” she yelled. “Hit it if you have to.” She wasn’t sure why a harmless ugly possum terrified her so much. A cold voice spoke up in her head that could only belong to the Madam. How do you know it’s harmless, Nina dear? He looks a little . . . hungry, doesn’t he?

“I ain’t gonna run it over,” Ramón said. Instead, he tapped on the horn and the thing dropped to its front paws and darted off into a nearby thicket of dead vegetation, trailing its fleshy tail out behind it.

“See? He ain’t as scary as he looks. Just like me.” He laughed, but it sounded forced. Nina let out a whoosh of breath and sat back in her seat. This whole plan was not getting off to a very promising start if she was jumping at random varmints in the road. Her nerves already felt like the burnt ends of a rope.

As Ramón steered the car into a circular driveway with a defunct fountain in the center, Nina got a good look at the house in the blue-white wash of moonlight, and her breath caught in the back of her throat. After the creepy stories and the weird possum, this was too much. Maybe they could still turn back. They could find a way to run without the money. Rob a bank, live in homeless shelters. Whatever it took. No amount of money could make her want to go into this place. This mad, mad place.

The house was in the style of an old Spanish mission, like something one would expect to see in California rather than upstate New York. The color reminded her of dirty old bones, and several cracks marred the stone exterior like black spider webs. But the worst part was the graffiti. Dozens of spray-painted symbols she didn’t recognize, save for the unmistakable pentagram over the door, covered the façade.  Thick bars covered the windows, all of which were dark save for one on the far left end of the lower level, which emanated a bluish flicker of light, probably from a television.

“Dios mio. It gets worse every time,” Ramón murmured.

Anger popped to life in her gut like a flame. Insensitive jerk. It wasn’t like he was the one who was expected to go in there. “How many girls did you drop off at this nut house over the years, huh? Why are you helping me out now? Conscience getting to you? What exactly is in there? You know, don’t you?” The questions flew out of her mouth like sharp little daggers, and Ramón, in his old black coat and black driver’s cap covering a mop of salt and pepper hair, bowed his head and took it all. Finally, he turned to her with the expression of a hurt dog. Tears brimmed in his dark eyes, and Nina couldn’t help but soften a little. There was no pleasure in stomping a broken man.

“I got no excuse for what I’ve done, but you have to believe I never wanted to do any of it. I’ve been bringing a couple girls up every year since I started working for the Madam. At first, it wasn’t any big deal. They didn’t seem any different. A lot of them looked forward to the easy money, even if they thought Ballas was a little odd. Far as I know, he didn’t pay as much then either. It’s only in the last eight or nine years that things turned real bad.” He looked out the passenger side window as the house seemed to loom over the car like a hungry monster. “And then, I brought the wrong girl up here. Her name was Angela, and I loved her. And I mean I was in love with her. I would’ve walked barefoot over a pile of nails to be with that girl, and I think she loved me, too. She was getting older and looking for a new life. Madam gave her the chance to walk free, like you, but she had one last trick. Just one more, and both of us wanted that more than anything, you know? So I . . . I drove her here, knowing by then something was funny about this place, but not wanting to say anything because it would mean she and I couldn’t be together. And I never forgave myself.” His voice cracked on the last word, the tears finally spilling down his face. He brought his hand up to cover his eyes and hissed, like his own tears were burning him. “I never saw her again.”

“She disappeared?” Nina asked.

He uncovered his eyes and sniffed. “Oh, she came out. But she was gone in her head, like the others. Muttering under her breath, eyes all blank and dusty. For a long time, I couldn’t understand any of it, but then one day I got my ears up real close to her mouth and I heard it. Daddy needs to eat, daddy needs to eat . . . Over and over again. The other girls would all say different stuff, but similar. Little bits from the freak’s act in there, I suppose.”

Nina spoke with a dry mouth. “What happened to her after that?”

“Like all the others, she was shuffling through the house muttering one day and then gone the next. I don’t know where the Madam takes them, though I begged her to tell me and earned a beating within an inch of my life for the trouble. I’d guess some Cassini goon takes ’em out into the woods and offs them and buries them out there.”

They couldn’t keep sitting in the car. Nina had to make a decision, and the longer she talked about this madness, the less likely she was going to go into that house and face whatever was in there. The only glimmer in the whole mess was the five hundred grand, ripe for the taking. It was a new life. If she walked out of there a little shell-shocked, wouldn’t that be worth it for the chance to be free, to give her mother a new life too so the miserable woman might cheer up a little? She wouldn’t be able to stretch her share of it forever. Eventually, she would have to return to work, but she imagined opening up a little bar on some remote Mexico beach, mixing mojitos and mai tais while wearing a bikini, her skin tanned dark enough to make her look like a native. She would leave all of her pain and mistakes to the vast Pacific. Nothing in this house could be bad enough to scare her away from that dream. Her mother always told her that sometimes the only way out was through. After five years of this life, there wasn’t much “through” left.

She opened the door before the voices in her head could do any more persuading one way or the other. “We’re still doing this. One last job, and then we’re both home free. Be ready to come get me.”

Ramón nodded, but the look of stark terror never left his face. “I’ll wait until you wave me on, and then I’ll be here when you come out. God be with you.”

Nina stepped out of the car and closed the door. After a deep breath, she turned to face the decrepit mansion. Ornate stone planters flanked either side of the door, filled with plants that had long ago crossed the line into compost territory. In one of them, Nina saw something that most certainly wasn’t a plant, and she nearly turned and ran back to the car in defeat. It was a woman’s high-heeled shoe. Red, with the peek-a-boo cutout favored by so many of the girls at the Weeping Willow. Or, rather, by the men who visited the girls. The shoe looked scuffed and shriveled, like it had been there awhile, perhaps left by the last one who visited Ballas in his house of horrors. Maybe it was Rosie’s.

Nina held firm. She would not run. This wasn’t just about the money, she now realized. It was also about finding out what had happened to the ones who came before her. She would meet the sick freak who lived here, and then she would give him something he wasn’t expecting, like a stiletto heel through the eye. It wasn’t likely anyone would miss the old fucker for a while.

She walked up the steps, giving the pentagram above the door a cautious glance before pressing the button for the bell. A discordant blare filled the space on the other side of the heavy red wood. Maybe it was the still air or the overall dread running through everything right now, but that atonal chime reminded her a of dying woman’s screams.

She heard another sound from inside the house. Something was rolling toward her, perhaps on skates of some kind. Then the latch clicked and the door popped open, leaving a small gap. No one welcomed her to come in, but the invitation was evident enough. She put her hand on the old brass knob.

Not too late to turn back, she thought. Hightail it back to the car now, before Ramón pulls away.

But she’d made her decision already. Put on your big girl panties and get this thing done. That was her mother’s voice this time, from their last phone conversation when Nina cried and begged to come home. She’d confessed everything: the drugs, stealing from the mob, about being forced into a brothel to pay off her debts. But the woman wouldn’t have her daughter back until it was all a done deed. The unflappable Janie Quick was a hard woman who had about as much pity to spare as the Sahara had water, and she didn’t believe in leaving any job unfinished, no matter how impossible. Nina wondered if she could convince her to run away to Mexico on stolen whore money, but she’d save that challenge for another day.

Ordinarily, she would have slipped into one of her sultry personas to make the client feel desired, but those theatrics were in another galaxy right now. Standing on the porch with quivering knees, staring at the blackness just inside that cracked door, she swallowed and cleared her throat.

“I’m Nina, from the Weeping Willow. Hello?”

She pushed the door open the rest of the way, but there wasn’t anyone there to greet her. Just more darkness tinted with the bluish flickering light from some other part of the house. She couldn’t hear anything, though. Nina turned to the car and waved Ramón on. It felt like a stab in the gut to do so. With a resolute nod of her head she stepped inside. The door, like the mouth of a monster, swung shut behind her with a thundering crack.

The first thing she noticed, apart from the darkness, was the smell of old urine and filth, so much like the subway trains she and Joey used to ride back in her city-dwelling days. But there was something more here. Something insidious, like the sweet reek of food gone over.  At that moment, she was grateful for the darkness, because she didn’t want to see just how bad this place was. Then she thought of roaches, perhaps even rats, and a tickle traced up the back of one leg. She jumped with a yelp, brushing at her calf. It was probably just a random tingle of the skin, but now she was hyper-alert and edging closer toward panic as she brushed at her arms and ran her hands through her hair. Her heart thudded like a trip hammer.

Stop it! Just stop before you have a panic attack. It’s just a dirty old man living in a nasty old house and nothing more. Probably just gets his kicks putting on a whole haunted house routine for the ladies and scaring the shit out of them on his dime. And speaking of which, where is he?

“Hello? Is anyone here?” she called out, her voice echoing in the cavernous foyer.

An orange colored light came on to her left, and she turned to see a tall, square-shouldered silhouette of a man standing in the arched doorway to another room. Nina couldn’t make out any other distinct details, but she could see the skin of his cheek. Something wasn’t right with it, but it was so hard to tell what.

“Mr. Ballas?” She stepped toward him.

“Mmmm . . . No. I’m the butler. And you’re a good girl. A very pretty good girl. Is your cunny cunt all wet?” He uttered a low giggle and Nina felt like a thousand tiny worms were crawling on her skin. His jaw was moving as he spoke and laughed, but she was sure there wasn’t any sound coming from his mouth. It was coming from somewhere overhead. Nina thought of a ventriloquist doll and shuddered. Only pitch darkness loomed overhead. The dim orange light had no hope of reaching ceilings so high.

She did her best to put on the mask she always wore for this job. “Oh, you know it is,” she said, pushing away the quiver wanting to sneak into her voice. She thought she did an admirable enough job, considering the circumstances.

“Come this way, good girl.” He gestured in the direction he was going, a casual enough thing Nina wouldn’t have ordinarily noticed, but the movement of his arm was odd. She couldn’t figure out why it bothered her until a distant memory popped into her head from when she was eleven or twelve. Her Uncle Richie, who had been a prop maker for a community theater troop, took her to a dress rehearsal for one of his shows, a musical of Pinocchio. She sat next to her uncle on a scaffold above the stage as he and another person secured the rigging attached to the actor who played the puppet. She remembered later watching the show alone in the audience, and how Pinocchio’s limp arms and legs flailed around as he walked and danced. It frightened her so badly she eventually had to cover her eyes. Even though the actor’s face and arms were painted to look like wood, he didn’t look like a puppet. He looked like a reanimated corpse. When she’d told her uncle this after the show, he laughed.

Yeah, he looks a little creepy, don’t he? But then, the story’s a little creepy too when you think about it. Puppets coming to life sounds like something out of a nightmare.

Nina agreed then, and she did even more now as she walked deeper into the hell house.

When the butler turned to lead her, she also realized he wasn’t walking. That explained the sound she’d heard when he answered the door. He rolled as if on some kind of cart. The wheels were creaking with a rapid regularity. He’s a corpse or a dummy propped up on that thing somehow. Someone’s pulling him along and moving his limbs like a puppet.

She gave her head a hard shake. Not true. Couldn’t be.

The butler led her through an enormous formal dining room, where dishes and other piles of trash littered a table that was at least twelve feet long. Electric candles brightened things just enough so she could see where she was going, but the butler remained draped in shadow as he rounded the corner into the next passage. Any vestige of hope that he might be a real person drained away as he bumped his shoulder on the edge of the doorway while turning into the hall. He didn’t react, just kept going. Despite the cold terror dripping down Nina’s spine, she felt an insatiable laughter bubbling up from inside her. She cut that off hard. Anything to screw this up now could very well get her killed, she was sure of it.

Oh why did I agree to do this?

She followed him into a wide hallway lit by more of the orange flambeaux. Crooked frames on the walls that once held artwork were now nothing more than ripped up canvas. The ones not slashed were spray-painted over with various designs. Nina saw one that looked like a white spiked penis jetting a red spray of blood from the tip, and she quickly looked away only to see the skeleton of a small animal nailed to the wall. A cat, maybe. She put her fist to her mouth to hold back a scream.

“Just a little farther now, good girl . . .”  Nina looked up again toward the source of the voice and a bar of moonlight briefly illuminated the bone white body of a man climbing along a web of crisscrossed ropes like a human spider. No. No, that couldn’t be an actual person up there, could it? Before she could make out more, the shadows swallowed him (or it) up again.

It was a design in the ceiling, she reasoned. Some sort of artistic or architectural element.

But it was moving, Nina girl. Didn’t you see it? Can’t you hear it breathing? Use your damn ears. Her mother’s voice again. A pillar of common sense was Janie Quick, but she was right. Over the echo of her heels on the dirty black and white tiled floors and the squeaky rumble of the cart rolling in front of her, Nina could now hear shallow intakes of breath. Wheezes, really. A few drops of water fell on her forehead and she reached up to wipe them off. The salty smell on her fingertips told her a different tale. This wasn’t water. It was sweat, dripping off the thing above her.

Oh dear Jesus, please get me out of this.

When Nina looked down again, the cart was stopped, and she nearly ran into the “butler’s” back. Another shiver wormed its way through her at the thought of touching it. This close, she could now see the thin white strings attached to its arms and shoulders running up to the ceiling. Another one connected to the top of his head. It was indeed a human sized marionette. Nina’s stomach turned.

They were now standing before a pair of enormous double doors. More graffiti marred the delicately carved wood. No strange symbols this time. Just nonsensical yet horrifying words, DADDY FUCK MEAT, in white spray paint. Nina tried to swallow, but her throat felt sticky like fly paper.

The arm of the butler fell against the door in a clumsy attempt at a knock. “Hello, sir. Your goody good girl is here.”

The human spider above her giggled again, a sound that was sure to render her certifiable if she had to hear it many more times. Nina came to a decision right then. Forget the job. Forget the half-mill and her plan to run away with Ramón. Even if the Madam was officially done with her and it meant roaming around the country with a giant target on her back, it would be worth it just to get far away from this place. She would endure anything just to avoid seeing what was behind that door. Before these thoughts could reach her feet and carry her back the way she came, the cart with the puppet butler wheeled around.

Her horror was as immediate and searing as a branding iron on her brain. The laughter from above entwined with her screams in a ghastly braid. The corpse in the cart might once have been a man, but it had since been fashioned into a freakish toy. His skin was leather stretched over bone. White ping-pong balls with black diamonds painted on them jutted from his eye sockets. Decomposition long since reclaimed the corpse’s nose, leaving a gaping hole in its place, and his mouth was a permanent rictus of teeth filed to sharp points. With a yank of the ropes, its hands were suddenly on her shoulders. They felt like giant bird talons.

Nina screamed again.

She tried to push the hands away, but with a deft motion from above, the dead butler’s hands wrapped around the straps of her dress. The thing above her head screeched more laughter.

“Oh no no. Not so fast, good girl. Daddy still has to eat,” he said. Play acting, like a kid with a gruesome set of action figures.

Daddy has to eat. Daddy has to eat. The last words Ramón ever heard his beloved Angela speak, and now Nina understood why.

“No! No, I want out! I don’t want to do this!” Nina screamed, but the thing only laughed louder, and her dress straps would not come free of the brittle fingers holding them. She started beating against its arms, hoping to splinter the bones, but its head shot forward and knocked against hers with a clack, like two billiard balls colliding. Nina rocked backward. For a moment she saw stars in her vision. Then she felt a cold piece of metal slide up her back, lifting up her dress and exposing her back to the cold air before grabbing her bra strap. A hook. This isn’t happening. Please God tell me this isn’t happening. She choked out a sob.

“Come now, good girl. Don’t fight.”

The double doors parted down the middle and the corpse-puppet butler rolled backward, pulling her into the room. She went without protest, because she feared next there would be a noose dropping down from the ceiling to hang her with and she wasn’t ready to give up and die. Not yet. There had to be a way out of this. The flickering blue glow she’d noticed from outside was not coming from a television, but from two or three of those bug zapper lights, a regular fixture of the redneck porch as she learned growing up in Iowa. One hung near the room’s cavernous fireplace. Large mounds of bug corpses were piled up beneath it. Next to that sat a wingchair pointed toward the end of the bed.

Nina heard the freak overhead wheezing and grunting as it moved around. Then something stung the back of her neck and she cried out. A few seconds later, her muscles went completely limp and she hit the floor, breaking free of the corpse butler’s grip and willing her mind to just detach and float upward like a balloon cut from its string.

But it refused. She couldn’t move her extremities, but she still felt fear, still knew exactly where she was and the horror slowly unfolding. It was a powerful and interesting drug cocktail, evil in its refusal to provide mercy of any kind. The way she landed, her head was pointed in the direction of the wingchair and she could see someone sitting in it. Or at least a shoulder of that person illuminated in the blue light.  She wondered if it was a guest, or if it was “Daddy.”

A cold pair of hands slid her useless arms up over her head and tied ropes to her wrists, elbow joints, and shoulders, and she soon realized it was her turn to become the puppet. She couldn’t see the thing doing the work, but only smell its putrid mix of sweat and human waste.

“Lay still, good girl. Lay very very still,” he whispered. “Then you can dance for Daddy.”

She heard the thing shuffle back up to its web and then with an immense grunt of effort, he hoisted her to her feet. Nina heard her shoulders pop and she screamed not from agony—the pain was dull and distant due to the drug now pumping through her system—but from terror. He pulled the strings from above, and her arms flailed around as she turned and twirled under no direction or volition of her own, like a drunken ballerina, her head flopping back and forth on the overcooked spaghetti noodle of her neck. The ropes dug deep into her skin, but she could only dimly sense the pressure. The pain would later be enormous, though, if she would still be alive to feel anything.

Her useless bare feet, dangling from her equally useless legs, dragged along the floor toward the enormous bed as this horrifying charade continued. She passed the wingchair as she went. “Daddy” was mercifully shrouded in darkness, but she knew she’d see him soon enough. This sideshow would continue until it consumed the last of her mind. That’s how it worked for all the good girls. Finally, she reached the bed where another of the bug zappers hung from one of the posts on the headboard, and with a hard yank of the cords, the freak pulled her up onto it and let her fall back with a heavy thump. The crispy corpses of dead flies and other bugs slid down the pillow, piling up against her neck. Then the freak lowered himself down by his legs like a well-trained acrobat on a trapeze. He was a hairless specter of a thing with long, spindly limbs and knobs of spine prominent beneath his translucent skin. He looked like he should be too weak to move, but then she realized with revulsion he was nothing but lean muscle, and he pulled her legs onto the bed with little effort.

“Please . . . please,” she whimpered, knowing it was useless but unable to stop herself. “Don’t do this. Whatever it is you’re going to do, please . . .”

He looked around at her then, and another chunk of her eroding cliff of sanity fell away. His eyes were more insect-like than human, with shiny black orbs bulging out of their sockets. A third one bulged out of the center of his forehead, but that could have just as easily been makeup. Nina’s fragile mind insisted that this be so, whether it was or not.

His cheekbones were so sharp and prominent they looked like they could tear through his skin. Like the butler, his teeth were filed to sharp points. He licked them with his tongue, which was as white as a sun-bleached slug, and blood spilled from his mouth, running down his chin. A pleasured moan escaped him, and she knew her pleas were useless.

Nina couldn’t turn her head, so she just closed her eyes. The imprint of that horrible face remained on her retinas, but she couldn’t open her eyes again if she tried. They felt like weighted shades. She floated off into some fevered state of semi-consciousness as the thing spread her legs apart and bound them by the ankles to the bed. Right then, she understood the other women who came here before her. They were trapped in a looping nightmare of this place, and she wondered how much worse things could possibly get before they were over.

A sharp slap to her cheek forced her to open her eyes, and she cried out. His upside-down face hung mere inches from hers. His blood-rotted breath hit her face like a hot blanket of spew and she couldn’t recoil no matter how hard she tried. Burning bile rose into the back of her throat and she swallowed it back.

“Daddy’s ready to eat now. Be a good girl. Keep your cunny cunt niiice and wet,” he whispered.

He wiped the tips of his fingers across her eyelids before climbing back up the rope, giving Nina a full view of the horror standing at the end of the bed, bathed in a blue wash of light. His face was little more than a grinning skull covered in a wiry cap of gray-black hair, and he wore a tattered gray business suit that looked to be at least thirty years old. His teeth weren’t filed points, but they gleamed a shade of white that could only be paint. Ping-pong balls filled his eye sockets, just as they had with the butler, but instead of being painted with black diamonds, they were more lifelike with irises colored a corrosive and hateful green.

Then something occurred to her, and maybe it was the gray hair and the suit, but “Daddy” must be Hank Ballas. The real Hank Ballas, if he were still alive, would be pretty old. It made more sense that he was long dead, perhaps even murdered by the human spider, the puppet master orchestrating this whole freak show, the thing hanging above them that kept calling this dressed up dead guy “Daddy.” But none of these realizations destroyed the flagging remnant of her calm. That honor belonged to the thing jutting from the open fly of Hank Ballas’s pants. It was an instrument of pure torture and mutilation, white and covered with spikes, and at least as long as her forearm. It would ruin her. It would likely even kill her. But not right away. No, it would be a slow, rending horror, like being flayed from the inside out. Nina tried to close her eyes, but she realized with a panicky dread that when the freak brushed her eyelids a minute ago, he was gluing them open. Now, like her, they had no hope of release. Not without suffering major damage. As the demented son of Hank Ballas lowered the corpse of his father onto her, Nina did the only thing she could do. She screamed until she knew nothing more.

Chapter 2

Ramón Takes a Detour

He sat in the Town Car in front of the Ballas estate, waiting as he always did for the deed to be done.  The last of his coffee gone from his thermos, he was now flipping through the paper when the screams inside started up again. They used to upset him, those screams, but he’d heard them so many times over the years they now washed right over him, becoming nothing more than a signal that the nastiness happening inside the house was business as usual.

He had always given the girls a chance to run, but every one of them refused. It was like they had been conditioned after so many years to suffer any amount of torture for money. And they all wanted to take the money and run. Ramón knew from personal experience how hard it was to resist the temptation of free cash and the open road.

The girls trusted him. Some even sympathized with him. He’d always had one of those faces—the round eyes and down-turned mouth of a sweet old dog no one would ever guess would bite. It had even fooled his mother growing up, but Madre had him figured out by the time he was ten or so, after one too many missing dollars from her purse. Ramón knew if the Weeping Willow girls learned about the things he’d done in his old life, they wouldn’t be so trusting or sympathetic. He’d grown softer in his old age, but he’d buried too many bodies to be what one would call a reformed man.

Aside from Angela, Nina had been the closest to convincing him to flee. She was smart and a little cunning, a bit like the younger version of himself, and just as prone to bad luck. In the end, though, she still wasn’t smart enough to save herself when given the chance, and that made her like all the rest. Sure, he’d left out some of the more gruesome details, the bloodier parts, but so what? He’d given enough, and these girls had stopped caring about the integrity of their bodies a long time ago. Besides, he was too damn old to run now, too tired of the romantic idea of freedom that infected the heads of the young and later killed most of them with crushing disappointment. The Cassinis had always made sure he was just comfortable enough to want to sit tight and not risk the generosities they’d afforded him, and the older he got, the more comfortable he became. Comfort had a way of killing the romance in just about everybody.

But he let Nina see him drive off before she went into that dungeon. Better to let her think there was hope waiting on the other side of things. He tried to think how long her hope might have held out before her screams began, but that only depressed him more. Best not to think of those things, old man. What’s done is done. It wasn’t his fault. He’d given her an out, but she’d been too foolish and greedy to take it. Ramón knew all about greed. There was no real cure for it but the total destruction of self, and that was what was happening to the girl right now.

Instead of going back to the Willow to pack his bags, he just went back down the driveway, turned around at the gate, and came back. By then, he could see the glow of orange lighting in the windows, which told him the game was under way.

To his credit, he did spend about an hour seriously contemplating Nina’s proposal. The girl was right about him knowing a few people who still owed an old man a favor or two. Enough to help him get passage out of the country. At one point, he even started up the Town Car and put it in gear. He did think about going back to the Willow, packing a bag, and maybe even bringing along some cans of gas to torch this hellhole like it deserved. After that, he could take the girl and dump her in an emergency room with some cash in her pocket, and maybe a note for the doctors telling them who she was and that she needed to be protected from the Cassinis. He couldn’t very well take her with him. She’d need to see a doctor, first of all, and would likely need reconstructive surgery. A girl that sick would draw a lot of unwanted attention, slow him down.  Of course, the Family would like as not find her and eliminate her while she was still in the hospital, but by then it would be a mercy to the kid.

But when the screams started inside the house, it was like someone pushed a button on the part of his brain that knew how things were really going to go down, that it was time to stop with the fantasies about skipping town and living out the rest of his days on a Baja beach under an assumed identity. He moved the needle on the gear shifter back to “P,” powered off the car, and continued waiting.

Ramón didn’t know what really happened in the house. Didn’t want to know. The girls’ mutterings were enough to scare him. He only ever stepped inside the place far enough to grab the suitcase always waiting just inside the door. No doubt the actual events were a nightmare—he’d seen the aftereffects too many times to count. Not just the madness, but the lacerations around their arms, and the bleeding. So much blood, in fact, that it ran in little streams down their legs, leaving pools on the Town Car’s floorboards and leather backseats. He was shocked any of them survived, but the Madam had plenty of help to fix things up so they could keep working, at least on a limited basis. All of them eventually went away for good, though. They were just too broken, both in their heads and down below, and no john wanted to fuck a broken girl, even at a steep discount.

The ordeal was nearly done. He could judge the end of the ritual as much by the intensity of the screams as by the coming sun, and hers were fading fast. Eventually, they would stop for good. They always did. Ramón pulled an old silver pocket watch from inside his jacket and checked the time, like some ghastly train conductor. It was just shy of eight o’clock, right on schedule. He decided to wait out the last couple minutes on the porch. Stepping out into the cool, dewy morning, he adjusted the cuffs of his jacket and walked up the steps, listening for the cues. There would be a rolling sound followed by a heavy thud and a weak couple of knocks signaling it was okay to open the door and collect both the girl and the cash.

When nothing happened after a few minutes, he checked his watch again. It was three minutes past. Unusual. Ballas was normally about as dependable as a Yellowstone geyser. Ramón shuffled his feet and tried to tamp down his mounting impatience. The Madam had never laid out a contingency plan for what to do if Ballas either stiffed on the money or decided to keep the girl longer, but Ramón supposed he would go inside and collect. The thought of venturing any deeper into the oversized crypt chilled his blood, but not nearly as much as the thought of coming back to the Weeping Willow empty-handed.

The knocks from the other side of the door startled him out of his thoughts so hard he jumped back and nearly toppled down the steps. Okay, good. Maybe his watch just needed a little adjusting. He cleared his throat and turned the old-fashioned doorknob. The hinges squeaked loudly in the early morning silence as he pushed it open, letting a wedge of sunlight into the gloom. The shadows seemed to almost scurry away from it, like a mass of beetles when someone lifted up a rock. Motes floated through the stagnant air, and he stifled a series of sneezes.

Something was definitely different this time. Instead of a single briefcase just inside the door, there were two. But there was no girl. A fountain of acid splashed up in the back of Ramón’s throat, which he swallowed back with a groan. For twelve years, he’d been bringing girls here, and this was the first time one wasn’t waiting here for him. Sometimes they were unconscious or nearly dead from the shock, but there was always a girl. Always. For the second time that morning, he found himself grasping for an alternative plan. The Madam hadn’t prepared him for this. If he was here to pick up a girl, there was supposed to be a girl, end of story.

He looked around. Ballas couldn’t have gone far. A skeletal staircase spiraled up to a second floor, but the risers were so heaped with debris, the rail and posts so shrouded with thick strands of cobweb, it didn’t appear anyone had used it in years. He looked down instead. In the dirt, he saw wheel tracks leading from the foyer to an adjacent area that looked like an equally neglected dining room. He also saw a set of fresh shoeprints that belonged unmistakably to a pair of high heels. Nina’s, he supposed.

His stomach wrenched, and he felt a sudden urge to either vomit or shit his pants. For some reason, this was worse than seeing the actual ruined girl at the end of her freakish carnival ride. These footsteps, so close to where she’d entered with hope in her heart, were the start of her descent to a place of horrors she’d never escape. Not far from here lay the source of that eventual madness and mutilation.

A very vital part of him wanted to follow those steps, see where they led, but he refused to entertain the thought of venturing deeper into the cavernous murk, not with the thing capable of ruining the bodies and minds of young women lurking somewhere inside, not without a weapon.

You’d deserve it, old man. If the freak caught you and tortured you, it’d be payback for all the lives and bodies you helped ruin. Think about all that blood.

Long ago, when he’d been a married man and only tinkering with the dark side—a few bookies here, a few mule runs there—he’d watched his wife give birth to their son Alejandro. The doctor had given her an episiotomy to ease the passage of the baby’s head, but her delicate flesh unzipped itself clear down to her rectum. It required a lot of stitches to close up and another surgery to repair her pelvic muscles. The blood flow had been enormous, and Alejandro was crawling by the time Maria could sit without a little plastic donut underneath her.

Whatever the girls had been through was worse than that, though. It was as if Ballas fucked them with a gun and then pulled the trigger. The thought was crude, even for an old thug like him, but it was all he could think of that could come close to matching it.  Damn it, enough of this.

“Hello? Mr. Ballas?” he called out, expecting an echo. But his voice didn’t seem to carry far, like the air was too flat. He walked toward the dining room, following the tracks. Somewhere, on the other end of the house, he thought he heard someone humming a tune. A woman, specifically. “Nina? That you?”

A commotion came from overhead and he looked up, but the ceiling was still shrouded in darkness. Something moved in the gloom, a pallid figure like some kind of strange acrobat, but it was moving too fast for him to know for sure. Certainly, that wasn’t a person. It couldn’t be Ballas, could it?

Would you feel better if it wasn’t? Ramón decided it was probably best to shut down this line of thinking entirely. Get out of here. Just grab the cases of cash and go. Tell the Madam that this time, a girl hadn’t survived the ordeal of the Ballas house and he buried her before coming back. It was amazing they’d made it this far without a body to bury. Even if it wasn’t true, it would be true enough before too long. No way would that girl live much longer without a doctor.

Something white fluttered down in front of his face, and he leaped back with a scream, fearing it was some enormous spider or mutant moth. It took a few seconds for his fevered mind to figure out it was just a folded piece of paper attached to fishing line.

But what’s at the other end of that fishing line? Don’t look up don’t look up . . .

It had the words “Dearest Driver” scrawled in shaky script on the front above a pair of smudged red lip prints. He had no way of knowing for sure if they were Nina’s, but he had a feeling they were. Swallowing more acid from his tortured stomach, he snatched the paper off the line and unfolded it. More shaky lettering, in barely legible scrawls of ink.

I have bin a VERY VERY good special girl and I have desided 2 stay take the money and DON’T COME BACK

Below were more words, but someone violently scratched them out. Ramón thought he could make out a few of the letters, though. The rest he filled in with context.

Tell my mom

Ramón could imagine the sadist holding her captive catching her trying to write those words and snatching the paper away, perhaps torturing her even more for her disobedience. As dreadful and disturbing as the short note was, he realized what it really meant. She was still alive. And Ballas intended to buy her. But why?

“Get out,” something whispered only inches above his head. He hadn’t intended to look up—didn’t want to—but his instincts betrayed him, the way the instinct to breathe will eventually betray someone underwater, even if it means a painful death. He couldn’t rightly describe the face he saw as human. Too many eyes. Too many teeth. A runnel of drool dripped down from its maw as it hissed at him. Ramón’s blood turned to frozen sludge, and the only warmth he felt was the piss running down his leg.

“Geehhht ouuuuut!” it screamed, spraying his face with a hot putrid mist. That broke Ramón’s paralysis, and he stumbled toward the salvation of sunlight and money.

He didn’t really think again until the Town Car was several miles down the road. Finally, not far from the entrance to the freeway, the realization of what he’d seen back at the house finally hit him. He jerked the car over to the dirt shoulder without slowing or signaling. Someone in a red Firebird blew by him with a blare of the horn and a middle finger jutting out of  its open T-top.  Ramón slammed on the brakes, the car grating to a stop in a cloud of dust and gravel.

His whole body trembled like he’d been handling a jackhammer, but worse was his stomach, which gave up the fight without much protest. Scrambling for the door handle, he leaned out of the car and gave a few dry heaves before spewing up a glut of bile and that morning’s coffee.

Acid burned his throat so bad it took his breath away. He hung there for a few minutes, coughing, breathing hard, thick ropes of saliva dripping from his lips, before he finally sat back up and reached forward to grab his Tums out of the glove box. He chewed up four of them and chased them with a couple swigs of bottled water. There wouldn’t be any more coffee for a while.

His eyes fell onto the battered suitcases lying in the passenger floorboard. Normally, he would have checked them for the agreed-upon fee before even leaving, but everything about this trip had gone wrong. Fumbling for the cases, he sat them in the seat and opened both of them. His heart, which had been galloping in his chest like a Kentucky thoroughbred for the last thirty minutes, stopped cold.

It didn’t take long to count it, and he knew the amount long before he finished. There was twice the money here than there normally was. Ramón Gutierrez, who was no stranger to large sums of money throughout his long and checkered career working in the slums of organized crime, was staring at a million dollars, and he could hardly form a thought in his head.

He wasn’t sure how long he gazed at the seemingly infinite stacks of hundred dollar bills, but when a large semi blew by hard enough to shake the car, he closed the suitcases and pulled the car back onto the road so he could think as he drove.

It wasn’t until he was about twenty miles outside the city when he allowed himself to acknowledge the question that had been in his mind since he’d seen the second suitcase sitting in that wedge of sunlight in the house.

Are you gonna give the Madam both of those suitcases?

His gloved hands tightened on the wheel. There, it was out. He would allow himself to at least consider the idea. It had a tempting shimmer to it, not unlike the one that came out of Nina’s mouth the night before when he was driving in the opposite direction. The Madam might already know about the second suitcase, but it was unlikely. Ballas only ever communicated with the brothel in writing, so unless he’d managed to have some courier jet down to Brooklyn with a letter in hand informing her that he’d intended to buy Nina with an additional half-mill, then there was no way the Madam would know. She would have told me. Unless, of course, this was some kind of sick test she was staging to see if he would take the money. But that didn’t seem much like the Madam. In thirteen years, she had never done such a thing, and he’d given her no reason not to trust him. If anything, she was too pragmatic, too insistent that she got her money and everything went strictly to plan with these Ballas deals. As far as Ramón could tell, he was the only one, other than the Madam herself, who knew about them, which meant she was likely staging something with the proceeds.

Which means it’s yours for the taking, old man. She won’t even miss it.

“No!” Ramón yelled aloud, silencing the young street hood he once was, the one in wife-beater shirts and pegged jeans and pointy boots still living in his head and popping up from time to time like that opportunistic “friend” who only came around when he needed money or a favor. The kind of “friend” he used to be when he was a kid. This was the second time in less than a day the temptation of money and escape was dangled in front of him. Ramón wasn’t a very religious man, but he was still a Catholic, still inclined toward superstition. He just had to decide if it was good superstition or bad, if God had presented him with a key to his escape, or a test of his faith and endurance of more hardship. Because if he took the money and she found out . . .

This time it’s different, hombre. She don’t know about the money. You give her the one suitcase of bills, but you keep the other, maybe put it somewhere safe. Bury it, if you have to. Then tell the Madam the girl died and you buried her.

No. No, not that. That would be a very bad idea. She might ask for evidence of the burial or for other details you’d have to make up on the spot. Best not to open yourself up to more lies and stick as close to the truth as possible. Say Ballas wanted to keep the girl, which was the truth. Even show her the note. And if the Madam wonders why Ballas didn’t pay her more, let her take it up with him.

It wasn’t his problem. He planned to be long gone by then.

And that’s half a million bucks you don’t have to split with nobody, too. Don’t forget that, old man. You can buy a whole new you with that kind of money, and have plenty left over for Baja.

For the next fifteen miles, he turned that thought around and around in his head like a piece of meat on a spit slowly browning and glistening with juices. He decided to make one more stop before going back to the Willow, this time to a particularly abandoned stretch along the river in Red Hook. This had been his turf as a punk kid slinging dope. Later on, in his early days as a grunt for the Cassini family, he’d dumped a few problem children off a few rickety piers along here, where the ghosts of industry past bowed at the feet of the enormous harbor cranes that stretched into the sky like strange god-like flamingos.

The street was dead empty at this time of day, when most of the hookers and dealers had only been in bed a few hours after their nocturnal shifts. At the end of the avenue stood a squat brick building whose windows had been covered with boards since Ramón was a young man. Before that, it was a small bottling plant for a regional soft drink no one remembered.

He pulled into the weedy lot, killed the engine and stepped out. The whine of machinery and shouts of the dock workers in the distance gave the day an injection of reality it had previously been missing. After making sure no one was watching him, he walked around to the passenger side door, his polished shoes digging into the grit, and grabbed one of the money cases. His freedom, heavy and solid in his hand.

There was a pile of old wood and other scrap behind the building, near the water. Ramón didn’t feel great about hiding the money here, but there were some nasty nails and other shards of old metal just waiting to give any greedy souls a tetanus kiss. He didn’t think many people would be rooting around in here.

You better hope not, old man. If you come back here and find someone got that case, you might as well just find someone to put a bullet in your head straight out. You don’t wanna be here when Madam starts asking questions.

He wasn’t worried, though. It was an existential sort of knowledge, but he just knew the money would be here when he came back for it, the same way he knew Nina was going to try to get him to run away with her, like all the other girls had. It was the rest of it, what was going to happen after he started running, the universe was refusing to show.

It took a little bit of doing to clear away enough of the debris to fit the suitcase. One rusty nail got hold of his jacket cuff and tore a small hole, but luckily it didn’t nick the skin. After sliding the case into the little nook he’d opened up in the debris pile, he covered it back up again as best he could and headed back around the side of the building and into the car. With any luck, he’d return to get it tonight.

Chapter 3

Madam’s Family Ties

With one final thrust of the Madam’s hips, the bronzed guido below her blew his wad in an unaffected bug-eyed grunt. She uttered the requisite amount of ecstatic moans to mingle with it, the kind that displayed ample gratitude for the dubious gift of a man’s seed. It was theater a smarter man would have undoubtedly seen through, but smarter men almost always avoided places like this.

Although she had at least broken a sweat, the sensation of the act didn’t penetrate beyond the outermost shell of her mind. Over the course of her long career in the world’s oldest profession, she’d seen no fewer than five thousand men, and nearly all of them had identical daffy expressions at climax, reminding her of someone choking to death on a piece of food. If only that had been the case for most of them, the world would be a better place.

She dismounted with the smooth grace of an old cowboy and took to her side of the bed. By the time she was a third of a way through her customary smoke, the guido was finished with his post-coital panting and sighs. Why they all got so winded, the Madam didn’t understand; she always did most of the work.

He was new to the Cassini organization. Some cousin of a cousin of Victor’s. The Madam wasn’t sure of his name, but what was the point? He was a clause in a verbal but nonetheless ironclad contract between her and Victor. The girls entertained the men and associates of the Family free of charge, and if necessary, the Madam—who stopped seeing incoming clients about five years ago—would also make herself available. The Cosa Nostra types wouldn’t tie up the business too much, but one or two weekends a month, at least half the beds in the brothel’s ten-bed house were filled with one particular brand of Dago meat. Of course, almost none of them tipped.

This weekend, they were running a full house, and none of the other girls were available when this particular guido punk arrived in the wee hours, smelling like cheap body spray and Jagermeister. The duty was left to the Madam. It was supposed to be a quick pump and go, but the kid had surprising staying power and had since overstayed his welcome, especially for a freebie. She’d have to talk to Victor about this.

None of this would have happened had she not sent the Nina bitch up to the Ballas place, but there had been little choice there. When Ballas sent word, you acted. There was too much money on the line to dilly-dally. Unfortunately, if the girl came back like the others had, she was likely to be out of service for at least a month, if she could be put back in at all. She didn’t even know why she kept taking the girls back, as they almost always had to be put out to pasture once it was clear their sexual functions couldn’t really be restored. Luckily, Ballas was often willing to assume complete ownership of some of his favorite girls, though at a slight discount from the original service. It saved the Madam from having to dispose of a body. She did have one man for that who worked independently from the rest of the family, and he kept quiet. Victor didn’t need such details getting back to him. It would only complicate such things, and he was ever after his cut of the pie.

The problem was Ballas had grown more and more brutal with the girls over the years, and the Madam didn’t always have a new replacement girl at the ready. Oh, there were always wayward young saleswomen trolling the streets, and most of them were former employees of the strip clubs Victor ran, but it took a special type to work for the Willow. One with the right combination of goods and desperation, and preferably without a family or someone who might complicate the Madam’s life if they came looking for their lost lamb. But Victor’s men were now on the lookout, and she hoped to have a replacement for Nina tomorrow night. In the meantime, she had to entertain this thug, with his sprayed-on tan and eyebrows waxed with almost robotic precision. A thug who was better at being a woman than she was these days.

The train of her thoughts halted when she felt his sweaty body press against hers in an attempt to snuggle. “Oh man, that was so damn good,” he muttered, kissing her shoulder. The Madam recoiled, pushing herself away from him. She had never been one for cuddling after the act. From the time she was seventeen, it had been a simple transaction and nothing more, and most men were okay with that. Some wanted to pretend they had a real girlfriend for the night, but she was upfront with them from the beginning. You came to her for the greatest fuck of your life, and then you got the fuck out.

Now would have been about the time she would have told a regular paying customer to leave the agreed upon amount on the dresser. Or, as was the case in the modern age, give her his credit card, which she would scan with a handy device on her phone. However, this client was fully gratis. All the free pussy a young mafia upstart could stomach and then some, and he thought that entitled him to something more. But kicking him out would mean she’d have to deal with Victor later, and it was because she was trying to figure out which thing would be worse that she let the guido stay.

She got out of bed, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, and put on her robe. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. Your clothes are on the floor here.”

The guido gave her a crooked grin, like she must have been joking, but the Madam only gazed at him, unsmiling, for a few seconds before he turned away with a frown. “Victor said you was a cold fish, but I didn’t think he meant you was a stone cold bitch.”

“Serves you right for underestimating your boss,” she said. She went into the bathroom to pee, leaving the door open. Protecting her possessions was more important than whether a swinging dick was uncomfortable with the sound of her piss hitting the water in the toilet bowl.

The guido continued to talk while she did her business. “Shit. Underestimate. Cousin Vicki don’t scare me,” he said. “He’s just a slow old man now.”

The Madam shook her head and wiped. This kid wasn’t going to last long. Victor would never be too old to cut off a back-talker’s balls, making him taste them before doing him the mercy of killing him, even if he was family. She’d seen him do so on more than one occasion. One time, he dangled the boss of a Bronx Russian drug syndicate off a helicopter over Manhattan to convince him to curry favor with that district’s Congressman. And those were just the more memorable moments. All a long time ago, sure, but Victor was still very spry. It seemed monsters lived in defiance of the aging process.

She hoped the guido would get dressed while she was in the bathroom, but after washing her hands and giving her face a splash in the sink, she came back out to find the Jersey wop bastard still lying flat out on the bed, leeching his fake tan onto her expensive linens. His cock was already looking a little more rigid. Irritation flamed in her belly. She hated young macho pricks.

“Don’t you have any other plans for today?” she asked, sitting down at her vanity table to pin up her hair. If he wouldn’t go quietly, she’d have to force the issue, and she hated having to do that. It often got messy.

“Nah. Figured I’d hang out here. Not like you got much else to do except fuck all day, right?”

Something in her snapped. It was the same part of her that had broken and mended so many times throughout the years it was now brittle and prone to shatter at a mere touch. Running this house had been somewhat responsible for that, but she’d been prone to it her whole life. Why couldn’t they just understand, at a single glance, not to fuck with her? Her hand slapped the little table hard enough to rattle the glass bottles of perfume sitting on it. That’s it. I tried to be nice. She flew across the room to the bed, eyes now bulging with rage, taking brief satisfaction at watching him shrink back against the headboard, his arrogant grin wilting along with his manhood. With movement so fluid even she couldn’t have tracked it, she pulled out one of her special hairpins, which was in reality a small stiletto blade she’d picked up from an artisan in Chinatown many years ago, and pressed the point into the base of his shaved testicles. It didn’t puncture the skin, but he yelped like it had. “What the fuck are you doing, you crazy bitch!”

“Don’t move, or your balls are going to be a couple of cocktail olives for my next martini.”

“You fuckin’ cunt. Cousin Vicki is gonna hear about this!”

“You can tell Victor whatever you like. He knows I have a business to run. I don’t fuck all day, and I don’t intend to start. Especially not with an orange guido prick like you. Do you get me?”

When he didn’t answer, she pressed the stiletto a little harder, and this time he screamed. A tiny trickle of blood dripped to the sheet, blooming like a flower. Red on white was always her favorite color combination.

“I said, do you get me? Or do you want a vasectomy right now? Lord knows I’d like to do my part to prevent you from spawning any offspring.”

“Yes! Yes, you crazy whore, yes! I get you!”

“Good. Now get the fuck out of here. And if I see you in this place again, I won’t be so gentle with my little blade.”

She withdrew the stiletto to the sound of his gasps. His hands immediately went to his sacks of goo.

“I’m bleeding, you bitch!”

“Relax. It’s just a prick.” She grinned at her own accidental joke.

He scrambled out of the bed, limping around desperately for his clothes. His feelings were more hurt than his testicles, but the Madam didn’t concern herself with bruised egos. Insolence wasn’t something she had to deal with very often, so she always went right for the soft and vulnerable parts. No sense in drawing things out. Victor would probably be a little irritated, but she could live with that. She’d dealt with much worse over the years.

She returned to her table and lit another cigarette. It was then she heard a little click behind her. In the mirror, she saw the gleaming metal of a switchblade. The guido’s hair was a crackly nest, his complexion an angry shade of dusk.

“How ’bout I cut you up too, bitch? Wanna see how it feels?”

The Madam took a drag off of her cigarette. If her pulse spiked even remotely at the sight of the blade, she didn’t notice. “Tell me something. You’re a cousin of Victor’s, right? Which side of the family?”

He gave her a bewildered frown. “I’m his Uncle Frankie’s grandson. What the fuck’s it to you, whore?”

“Ah, Uncle Frankie,” she said, turning around to face him. He could have plunged the knife into her exposed chest at any moment, but she wasn’t worried about that. Her weapon was bigger. It always was. “I loved Uncle Frankie. He gave the best Christmas presents when I was a girl.”

Already, he was lowering the blade.

“W-what?”

“Oh, Victor didn’t tell you? I’m his sister. But you know how huge Italian families can get. You and I are only a little bit related, but there’s nothing wrong with keeping it in the family, I always say.”

The switchblade fell out of the guido’s hand as realization dawned on his face. He looked like he wanted to be sick. “You . . . there’s something fuckin’ wrong with you. Up in your head!”

She placed her hand on her heart, feigning insult. “Aw, come on now, Cousin. You didn’t seem to mind it a little while ago. Doesn’t matter when it’s in the dark and you’re lonely and just looking for a hole to stick it in. How did you put it? ‘Oh yeah, oh yeah, best pussy I ever had, mmmmm . . . lemme fuck that pussy alllll night.’ ”

She started laughing and the guido turned and fled. The sound of his footsteps thundering down the stairs, punctuated by the surprised yells of the girls he ran into along the way, was like music to the Madam’s ears. Finally, she could be alone.

***

An hour later, she was showered and sitting in her office, waiting for Ramón and the money. Normally, the driver called from the road when he was on his way, but there had been no phone call, and it was about forty-five minutes past his usual arrival time. Too much was riding on this money for something to go wrong. Ballas was an odd and frightening client, but he paid so well it was worth the hassle of having to deal with his peculiarities, like his insistence on communicating only via writing and paying in cash. The last was particularly troublesome. It was a lot easier these days to launder data than actual paper, but a half-mill was a half-mill, and she needed it more than she’d ever needed anything in her life.

She was tired of sitting on the sidelines, being her brother’s little fly trap while he ran roughshod all over the city sinking their family deeper into the pit of irrelevance. Victor had been getting careless for a long time. Killing before thinking. Letting his ego get ahead of his better judgment. The pinnacle of it had come with his refusal to back their longtime Congressman over some off-hand remark about not liking the food at Victor’s favorite restaurant. Because of that chunk of missing money, their horse lost the race to a guy whose number one priority was cracking down on dirty campaign money and organized crime. A real incorruptible white horse type. The Madam hadn’t thought such men existed anymore, but apparently they surfaced from time to time like rare birds once thought extinct.

Yes, it was time to put her dear brother out once and for all and do what their father wanted her to do for years before he died stinking and raving in his bed: take the crazy son of a bitch down before he ruined them all. Of course, it wasn’t customary for women to take the reins and she’d only been sixteen when Dante died, which allowed the older and decidedly more male Victor to assume the lead without question after the old man’s funeral, and he’d relegated her here a few years later, in this house of spunk to do the dirtiest of dirty work in total obscurity. She wasn’t even invited to most family functions, treated like the biological outcast she was. But that would soon be over, and the fat slobs on the board would have to accept her claim to her birthright and all that it entailed whether they wanted to or not. She’d convince them. Maybe not with a stiletto to their balls, but that option wasn’t out of the question.

Goddamn it, where the hell was that spic driver? He was running late, which was highly unusual for him. As soon as she saw him, she was going to grill his taco eating ass six ways from Sunday. Ramón had been a good old dog through the years, but even the best  ones eventually outlived their usefulness. And if he decided to get fresh and make off with the money this time...

She tamped down that thought, fast. There was nothing to worry about. Even if Ramón did get stupid, he wouldn’t make it out of Jersey before someone in the Cassini network picked him up. “You’re just being a paranoid old whore,” she muttered to herself, getting up and going to the window overlooking the driveway.  A few minutes later, the black Town Car pulled up to the house, parking in its usual spot. The Madam’s keen eyes noticed the road dust on the car’s normally sleek body. What kind of driving had he been doing?

She watched as Ramón got out of the car, her heart relaxing a little when she saw the customary black suitcase in his hand. Okay. Everything was okay. Except he continued on into the house instead of getting the girl out of the backseat. That was not okay. Not okay at all. The Madam turned away from the window and grabbed another cigarette from the case on her desk. Something to occupy her nerves until he got up here. She could already hear his heavy footsteps on the stairs, the rhythm matching the hot and steady beat of her heart.

Where was the fucking girl? Goddamn it!

After another shaky inhale of her expensive European cigarette, she heard him knock. “Get in here,” she said. She’d intended to start off coolly inquiring about Nina’s whereabouts, but she couldn’t hold the anger at bay. The stress of the morning sucked out all of her patience.

Ramón closed the door behind him. Peeling off his cap, he walked over and set the case in its usual spot. The Madam didn’t bother glancing at it.

“You’re missing something, Ramón.”

He raised his eyes to hers, and she was pleased to see the proper mixture of fear and deference in them. “Yes, Madam. I, um . . . Here, I’ll just show you this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper and handed it to the Madam.

She gave it a read, noting especially the smudged red lip print, and crumbled it up in a rage-filled fist. What sort of fucking nonsense was this? She wanted to stay there? The girl didn’t have the authority to make that kind of decision. And who the hell did Ballas think he was keeping her without prior authorization of a deal? That girl was her property, not his. He might be some wealthy weirdo, but she was in charge here.

“Those . . . those fucks!” She glanced back up at Ramón, who had taken a few steps back from the desk. “And what did you do? You just let him keep her?”

The driver fumbled for a moment. “Madam, I didn’t see her there. Didn’t even see him, not really. The note was . . . waiting for me with the money.”

“And you didn’t look for her? Just picked up the money and ran?”

Ramón shook his head. “I swear to you, I would’ve, but that house. Something ain’t right about it, Madam, or the person who lives in it. And I mean really not right. You have to believe me. Without a weapon or any sort of protection, I didn’t feel qualified to go on a rescue mission”

She looked at him for a moment, her cigarette a forgotten cylinder of ash in the ashtray. She plucked another one out of her case and lit it, this time feeling a bit calmer. He was telling the truth, at least partially. Of course, something wasn’t right about Ballas. She’d seen enough ruined girls come out of his house to know that. But this was the first time he’d ever turned into a thief, and if there was one thing she hated more than anything on this earth, it was a thief.

She grabbed the case and opened it. “How much is in here? Did you count it?”

“Yes. It’s the usual amount.”

There had been a slight pause before he answered. It was minute, noticeable only by someone trained in the art of deception. Or maybe her anger at this unexpected turn of events was making her see phantoms. Ramón wouldn’t be holding out on her. He wouldn’t be so stupid.

She relaxed in her high-backed leather seat. “Very well. This transaction isn’t complete by any stretch, though. Tonight, you’re going to go back up there and collect my property. I’ll even authorize the use of a weapon. If Nina is indisposed, I expect you to come back with a second case identical to this one. If that freak wants to keep what’s mine, he’s going to pay for it. Got it?”

Ramón nodded. “Yes, Madam.”

He turned to go, but she stopped him. “Actually, a slight correction. Take me with you. I think it’s high time I meet with Mr. Ballas face to face.”

Chapter 4

Nina Dances

I’m dead. Oh thank God I’m dead.

So this is what it felt like. After so many years of pondering the afterlife, she was now experiencing it, and it was wonderful. There was no pain, no sadness. The memory of her terrifying final moments felt distant and hazy.

But why was it so dark? She didn’t recall passing through any tunnels leading to a cleansing white light, like so many people who have had near-death experiences talk about. Maybe all that was just a hallucination or a collective fiction passed down through the ages. In death, it seemed there was no light.

Unless you’re in hell. You didn’t exactly lead a clean life, you know. You didn’t have a chance to repent for any of it.

No. She wouldn’t hear any of that noise. Not yet. This couldn’t be hell. She thought the lake of fire and salivating demons were a similar collective fiction shared among humans, but there had to be more to it than just this roaming darkness. She couldn’t even buy that it was purgatory.

“Hello?” she called out. Or attempted to call out. Her voice was a gravelly screech, and her throat momentarily flamed like embers in a cool night breeze. Then she recalled her screams, a long grating torrent of them. She had become the screams, and either those screams—or the terrible result of them—had followed her into the afterlife, or she wasn’t dead and she was just lying here, drugged and semiconscious in the den of a monster who had done so many horrible things to her.

Unspeakable things. The most horrible of unspeakable things. He’d even glued open her eyelids so she had to watch it happen, but they had come loose at some point, the only mercy in the whole ordeal. Terror and tears will weaken even the strongest adhesive.

Her lower lip began to tremble as little by little the truth of her situation filtered into her. The dank smell of the place, the rough feel of the cloth covering her eyes, the sound of the freak puppeteer that did this to her wheezing overhead in its web of rope and string.

She tried to move, but her limbs were so much useless putty. At least she wasn’t tied up anymore, but her arms lay like nerveless meat at her sides. Maybe that was a good thing, because she couldn’t feel the rest of her body either.  The mutilation. Nina thought of the club-like instrument sticking out of Hank Ballas’ pants—the corpse of Hank Ballas, her cruel mind interjected—with so many spikes sticking out of it like needles on a grotesque cactus, and how she’d wished for a quick death. The pain and terror and the goddamn iniquity of still being alive, after that endless torture from which at some point she’d retreated to the deepest most childlike corner of her mind, filled her with a rage and despair she’d never known in her twenty-two years.

A yawning chasm of madness awaited her, just over the edge of a very tempting cliff. If she just let herself fall, it could all be over. It sang her a song in dulcet tones, much like her mother’s voice when she had been young and pretty and sort of nice.

Fall, sweet Nina.

Come to me

You’ll never be alone here

I’ll give you sweets

No more pain. She’d never even have to truly wake up from this nightmare. Just fall straight into the comforting madness and wallow around in its soft, marshmallow goodness. Besides, would you really want to live through this? Those other girls checked out, just like Ramón said, and clearly that was for the best, because unlike those other girls, she was stuck here. Something had happened earlier, but she couldn’t remember what. A deal of some kind? A note to Ramón she’d been forced to write.

Ramón, that motherfucker.

He knew what was in here. The slimy, weak motherfucker. Sure, he’d tried to warn her on the way here, tried to give her a chance to run, but he didn’t try hard enough, hadn’t told her all the mutilation those girls suffered, because in the end he was still set on doing his job, being a lapdog for those sociopaths. He let her go into this place knowing she would come out a ruined wreck like all the others, and he would have taken her right back to the Weeping Willow dungeon to wander its halls in a muttering stupor until the Madam decided she’d had enough of feeding and clothing an invalid whore. Now, it seemed, the Madam wouldn’t have to worry about that part. The weirdo would have his fun, the Madam would have her money, and the next girl would be sent down the chute and land here after she was dead and buried. Or turned into a puppet for Junior’s amusement. What had that note said? She wished she could remember.

Her mind, similar to the rest of her, was like an over-tenderized piece of meat, and she lay there for several minutes, fading in and out of consciousness, willing herself not to think too hard so that it would drift into her memory like an autumn leaf on a puff of wind. Then, on the verge of a coma-like sleep she hoped would carry her out of this world forever, she remembered a white piece of paper and touching it with her lips, which the freak had painted with lip gloss from her own purse. She’d written what the freak told her to write. But what did it say? Oh God, but she couldn’t remember!

She had no concept of the passage of time, but she was sure enough hours had passed that Ramón had come back for her and the money by now, and if so, he had read that note and . . . what? What did the goddamn note say? “I’ve been a very very good girl,” she croaked, her voice all but withered down to a rough whisper. That was part of it, but there was more . . .

DON’T COME BACK!

Images of the Ballas corpse looming over her, blood from her ruined womanhood dripping from its spiked torture instrument, the voice from overhead screeching, threatening. “Write it! Write it! Don’t come back!” And her trying to hold the pen with numb fingertips and move it with a mostly dead arm.

The thought filled her with a mixture of horror and glee. She was a prisoner here, but she was also free from the Madam. Oh, what a world where one even has to consider which is worse. Certainly that was the sweet lullaby of madness in her head speaking. Certainly she wouldn’t actually prefer to be here with this freak than back at the Weeping Willow. Right?

Prison is prison. Does it really matter where you’re at if you’re still not free? Janie Quick, the eternal font of wisdom and common sense.

But the note signified something important. It meant no deal had been made ahead of time. It meant Junior had decided to keep the product instead of returning it. Maybe he’d paid extra and that would be enough for the Madam. Everyone had a price.

Janie Quick wasn’t having it, though. Oh come on, honey. Put together two and two. Assuming Ballas doubled the payment, that driver had a million bucks sitting in his car, half of which the Madam wasn’t even expecting. With you out of the equation, you think he wouldn’t take that money and run? That’s what you’d have done. Don’t try to deny it.

If Nina hadn’t been in so much pain she would’ve laughed. Assuming her theories were true, the Madam would be without property and full payment, and Ramón—assuming they hadn’t caught him in the act—would now be on the run. Maybe Madam would come here and demand her property back, maybe not. Either way, she would be stuck here until she was dead. It was a desperate hope for a quick death she clung to as the demonic shadows in her mind pulled her into a deep sleep, filled with the vivid and tortured memories of her undoing.

***

She awoke to the same blindfolded darkness, but with a bright new agony below her waist. Whatever painkiller or tranquilizer she’d been on earlier had dissipated while she slept, leaving her with a sensation she could only compare to being engorged with liquid fire. The screams from her shredded vocal cords carried no real resonance, and perhaps that was a relief given what foul thing lived within earshot. Something else changed since she’d last blacked out, aside from the coming of the pain. She could also feel her limbs again, at least a little bit. She gave her toes a wiggle and immediately felt her heart soar with gratitude. At least those vital parts of her were working. However, when she tried bending one of her knees, the pain between her legs flared, sucking the breath out of her lungs. At least the movement allowed her to detect the cold and sticky sheet below her. Lord knew how much blood soaked into it.

Speaking of which, how had she not bled to death? She lifted one tingly hand to feel along the contours of her arm and immediately came upon the tape and plastic tubing. The fucker was running an IV into her. Possibly two. Had he given her a transfusion? And with whose blood? Did this guy have help? Certainly he would have to. A corpse butler couldn’t do everything, and even if he had a corpse doctor, no amount of skilled puppetry could make it place an IV and sew her up where she needed to be sewn.

She wondered what she must look like down there. Images of mutilated genitals flashed through her mind, but she shut that shit down hard. She wouldn’t even think about that. Not now. All she wanted right this second was to stop hurting and maybe go back to sleep, perhaps forever. That meant she had to call out to the freak who did this to her. The monster. She wasn’t even sure the thing was completely human. It had three eyes, for fuck’s sake.

You don’t know that. You don’t know if that was real or some kind of makeup.

That may be, but she somehow doubted it. If he was human, he was very deformed, and she was afraid if she had to look upon that face again, she would fall into the pit of madness still calling to her with her mother’s younger, sweeter voice, whether she wanted to or not.

“Hello?” she said. “C-can you please help me? I’m hurting.”

She listened. Only the drone of the bug lights answered back. She thought maybe she could see a peek of blue beneath the band over her eyes, but she was also grateful that was all she could see. Her memories were terrifying enough.

“Hello?” she called out again, this time a little louder, or as loudly as she could muster with her ruined larynx. Her tongue also felt about three sizes too big for her mouth. Just when she was about to call out again, she heard the sound of wheels rolling on wood, the same sound which had greeted her as she’d stood on the porch of this hellish house, waiting to be let in for her very last trick. It was the butler coming for her. The dead butler with the black diamond eyes. Nina’s blood ran cold.

“Can I help you, Misssss?” The freak was throwing his voice in some pointless attempt at ventriloquism, but Nina could tell he was still overhead. Directly above her, in fact, controlling his puppet with its vast array of rope and string. She wanted to cry all over again, but she swallowed back the tears as best she could. Why was he doing this? What was wrong with him? All good questions, but first, she needed to address her pain. Numb yourself and everything else will fall into place. It’ll be okay. Her mother’s voice again, oddly soothing. Not the whip-crack nonsense she was used to from the unshakable Janie Quick.

“I need more medicine,” she said. “Please. I’m hurting so bad, I . . .” Her voice gave way to whispering and the tears began to flow, despite all her efforts to suck it up and not grovel. She just wanted this to be over with. All of it. Briefly, she thought of Rosie, the girl she’d found lying in a pool of blood in the Weeping Willow’s bathroom, arms slashed to ribbons. If Nina could find a way to do something similar, it could all be over for her, too.

The run of her thoughts was cut short by the squeak and clink of ropes and harnesses above. The freak was on the move, and she could smell him as he moved in closer. She fought in vain to move away, but a pair of frigid wiry hands yanked her back to center. Something hot and wet glided up the side of her face, and it was only after she breathed the swamp bottom fetidness of the thing’s breath that she realized he was licking her.

Revulsion and chills wracked her body, but she clamped down on her scream. Licking my face. Oh dear Jesus, he’s licking my face!

“Mmmm . . . I love the taste of your pain,” he whispered.

Nina ripped her head away with a cry. “Fuck off!”

The side of her face exploded in hot agony as he hit her, opening up a galaxy of white stars in her vision behind the blindfold. It hurt like hell, but it took a little of her attention away from the other parts of her that hurt.

“You can have medicine, but first you dance for Daddy.”

Dance? She remembered the horrifying ballet he’d made her do after he’d tied her up to look like a life-size marionette. The thought of doing that now, after everything he had done to her . . .

“No. No, I can’t. Please.”

Her words were so many ignored mumbles as her arms were brought up over her head again and tied with the ropes. She could hear the freak panting as he worked. She smelled his rotten sweat as he crawled over and around her like an enormous spider, securing additional bonds to her wrists and elbows, and wrapping a belt around her waist. When he moved her to do that, another nauseating ripple of pain roared through her body. Her screams went unanswered. If anything, the thing’s breathing quickened as if in excitement. Finally, he tied more knots around her feet and ankles and then, with one quick swipe of the finger, ripped off her blindfold.

Her sensitive eyes flooded painfully with the blue light illuminating the room, and she squinted. The sickly pale form of the thing suspended before her for only a moment, a merciful moment where her eyes had not completely focused, before it crawled back up to its ceiling lair, the place from which it orchestrated this whole morbid show. Nina could feel her mind starting to uncouple again, retreating to somewhere safe, as it had after the spiked phallus ripped and gored her flesh. But when the thing above yanked the strings, forcing her upright, all hope of remaining safely ensconced in her mental cage was obliterated by the pain that was no longer a mere wave, but a devastating tsunami wiping out everything in its path.

She sensed the complete ruination of everything that physically made her a woman, but she refused to look down. Didn’t want to see the blood she felt running down her legs like piss. She only hoped she would lose enough of it so her mind would go black forever and put an end to this nightmare.

“Dance with Daddy! Dance with Daddy!” he cried as he manipulated her out of the bed. She could support her own weight a bit more this time, but only barely. There was no hope of controlling any of it. The puppeteer was stronger, and her body too weakened by trauma. He whirled her around and she came face to face with “Daddy,” Hank Ballas, dangling from a similar contraption. For now, his instrument of genital mutilation had been put away. He merely gazed at her with his strange painted green eyes and permanent rictus and then gave her an oddly graceful bow.

“Would you care to dance, my lady?”

It appeared as if the corpse had spoken with its mouth, but then she remembered the butler’s jaw moved as well. Just more puppetry. She could see faint glimmers of fishing line. How long before she became one of them? No longer a living puppet, just a dried out husk with painted plastic eyes and joints articulated by string?

The freak manipulated her into a sloppy and agonizing curtsey. Despite the pain, the world was going gray around the edges, and she welcomed that. Oh yes, please come to me, gray fog. Take me away and don’t bring me back, ever.

A moment later, the music began. A classic waltz. It sounded tinny and scratchy, like it was coming from a very old record player. She barely felt the corpse’s arm slide around her waist, or her hand press against the rough and brittle skin and bones of his other. She watched her hand rise and then fall onto his shoulder under no direction from her brain and couldn’t help but marvel at how very malleable she’d become.

Soon, they were spinning around to the beat of the music, like a couple in a most nightmarish ballroom. The pain was on another level somewhere, and when she finally closed her eyes, the music had become little more than a hum, the afterimage of Ballas’s hateful green stare following her into the darkness.

Chapter 5

Ramón and the Derringer

He panicked the minute the Madam said she was going back with him to the Ballas house, and it remained with him the rest of the day like low static on a bad radio signal. Now, in his tidy little apartment over the Weeping Willow’s garage, he was sitting on his freshly made bed, staring at his top dresser drawer with the sort of intensity one reserved for something like telekinesis. The drawer’s contents, save for one special little thing, were now in the suitcase he’d packed earlier and stowed in the Town Car’s trunk, and he was trying to decide whether he should leave that one item here and move on, or bring it with him to do what he knew deep down needed doing, even if it would set the dogs of hell on his tail.

That special little thing, of course, was a small Derringer pistol, disassembled, its pieces duct taped to the underside of the dresser top. It had been there, suspended over his socks and underwear, since a few months after he’d moved in here. Cassini’s boys thoroughly rooted through every belonging he owned in the beginning, checking for contraband. He didn’t have the pleasure of privacy like a member of the family, or even one of their standard goons. He was a prisoner, not unlike the whores making the bedsprings squeak back in the house. Prisoners—even trustees like him who transported valuable materials—were never issued guns. It was simple, really. If he fucked up and lost the cargo, or if somebody robbed him, he better make sure the thief put a bullet in him before Victor got involved. But in all the years he’d been moving money around for the Cassinis, he hadn’t once encountered a close brush. He still had fire in him, his name still meant something. Ramón also knew Dante Cassini, Victor’s father, and that probably helped as well. Dante . . . Now that was a gentleman. Too bad his son turned out to be such a fucking ghoul, but then again, that ghoul’s loyalty to his old man was what ultimately saved Ramón’s ass.

Before he became Victor’s bitch, Ramón had a few hidden caches throughout the city. A couple hundred bucks behind a loose brick in Chinatown. A duffle bag with a few joints or pills in a locker at Grand Central Station. The pieces of the small Derringer pistol he had socked away in his underwear drawer were spread amongst all those caches, and he’d smuggled them here one by one over a period of a few months. The specially made .410 shells came last, and they were useful. It was strictly a “get out of a tight jam real quick” pistol, easy to conceal and guaranteed to hit something regardless of aim.

All the time he worked for the family, he hadn’t felt a need to put the Derringer together and carry it on the sly. It wasn’t worth the risk of getting caught, for one thing. There were a few occasions he’d considered just getting rid of it, but Ramón knew you didn’t leave the life and just leave your weapons behind. A piece, even a little pop gun like this one, was as much a part of his old gangster’s anatomy as his swinging dick. And he always knew a time would come when he needed it. Now was that time. So, what, you just blow the Madam away? That’ll make your situation with Victor easier. You haven’t fired a gun in over fifteen years, either. Unless you plan on accidentally shooting yourself, maybe you should stick to using your hands.

Maybe, maybe not, but he needed a little insurance in this situation. Obviously, he couldn’t go back to the Ballas place, especially with her in tow.  All that remained back there was madness and death. But if the Madam was with him and she discovered the truth of his little embezzlement, maybe after comparing notes with the freak about a certain half-mill . . .

Best not even to think ahead that far.

Ramón stood up, resolve firm in his heart, and pulled open the dresser drawer to peel away the parts of the Derringer. After a few clicks and adjustments with an Allen wrench, he pocketed the little pistol—really, it was small enough to fit comfortably in his trouser pants without the slightest bulge—and sat back down on the bed. The sun had gone down an hour ago, and he anticipated a call from the Madam any moment telling him to have the car waiting out front. He ran through the plan again.

His phone rang at nine on the dot. The Madam was nothing if not punctual.

“Hello?”

“I’m ready, Ramón. Bring the car around.”

“Sí, Madam.”

They’d had the same conversation, verbatim, nearly every day for the last thirteen years, and God willing it would be the last one. He felt a strange grief at that, and a specter of terror just outside the door of his inner sanctum scratching to be let in, but he forced himself to ignore it. He was already beyond the point of no return. Now he just had to finish this last bit of ugliness, and then he would be on his way.

In fact, the more he thought beyond his initial panic, this slight shift in plan was pretty much ideal. Once he got the Madam out of the way, he would be able to get a much bigger head start before Victor Cassini or any of the hoods in his network were notified of what happened. That meant he’d have time to run one very quick errand before he started making his way south.

He secured his black driver’s cap to his head and took one final glance in the small mirror over the dresser. The wrinkles and salty hair said he was an old man, but the eyes hadn’t changed. They were the eyes of a killer. His own mother knew that about him, even before he became one of the many serfs in the Cassini empire. Madre would look up at him from the vegetables she was preparing for that night’s dinner, or the sewing and mending she always had in her lap when she watched her afternoon “stories,” always with a grimace of disappointment on her face. You a cold boy, Ramón. You been touched by the devil. I knew it from the day the doctor put you in my arms. You was cursed, and you would be the curse of me. She would then hold up one of her hands, so twisted with arthritis it was a miracle she was able to do anything at all, and do the sign of the cross on herself. Thirty years later, the pain by that point more than almost anyone could bear, Juanita Gutierrez would die a raving pill junkie in a state-run nursing home.

Ramón wasn’t sure whether his mother had been right about a curse, or if he’d just grown to live up to her expectations, but he had always felt the coldness she’d sensed in him. His wife might also have agreed, especially on the night she died. And right now, with murder on the brain, he was feeling downright arctic.

He locked the door behind him and walked down the stairs to the garage’s main floor, where the Town Car waited. It would start out just like any other night on the job, but beyond that, his life would undergo one very large tectonic shift. Once inside the car, he pulled out the Derringer and placed it inside the folded newspaper that always sat on the seat beside him.

The Madam was waiting out front for him, dressed for either a funeral or a chilly autumn night in a black pantsuit and a matching peacoat. The light from the mostly full moon made her skin look like bleached bone. He parked beside the curb, got out and held open the door to let her in.

“Good evening, Madam,” he said.

Her smile was thin and cold, like her. Ramón wondered how any man could fuck her without feeling like they were putting it to a corpse. “It will be a better evening when we retrieve what’s mine, Ramón.” She slid into the car, and he closed the door.

Once he was back behind the wheel, she tapped the back of his seat.“Make it snappy, by the way. Traffic should be light, and even if we’re pulled over, I have no doubt I can get us out of it. So just go.”

Ramón nodded and put the car in gear. “Yes, Madam. In fact, I know a shortcut.”

“Even better.”

He prayed to whatever God answered the pleas of murdering ex-thugs (ex? You can’t be serious right now, old man) she wouldn’t ask where they were going once she realized he was heading in the complete opposite direction of the Ballas estate. The jig wouldn’t become completely obvious for a bit yet, but soon, the city would be on the wrong side of the car, and the Madam was no dummy.

“That son of a bitch Ballas. After so many years of business, I can’t believe he would pull something like this with me.”

Ramón looked in the rearview mirror to see her picking at the leather gloves she was wearing. He hoped she would keep talking.

“I just want you to know I’m sorry about all this, Madam.”

“So many girls,” she went on, ignoring him as she usually did when he was driving and she was thinking aloud. “When I think of all the money I made over the years from Ballas alone . . . I could have retired somewhere far enough away that no one would ever find me. I could have become someone else.”

Ramón swallowed, his grip on the wheel tightening. He suddenly felt very paranoid, like the jig was up, but he said nothing for fear his voice would shake. And that would get her attention.

“I’ve been saving most of that money, you know. Not for a retirement, but for investment. Maybe that makes me a fool. Certainly a masochist, given everything I’ve had to deal with over the years. But I’m not ready to be done with Ballas yet. I need more from him. Now this little . . . wrinkle has to happen, just as I’m about to consider making my move.” Ramón heard the smack of leather punching leather.

He was curious what her investment plans were, exactly, and why she needed so much money to do it. But it didn’t much matter. In twenty minutes, any plan the Madam had would be rendered null and void by the heat he was packing in the folded newspaper by his side. He only hoped he would be able to do what was necessary when the time came.

“It’ll be okay,” he said.

They rode in silence for a little while, and then the Madam spoke again. “You know, Ramón, maybe you’re right. Maybe it will be okay.”

Ramón’s stomach burned. It was the first time she’d ever directly addressed him during one of her car rants. He heard her leaning forward, just as Nina had the night before. What was it about the sound of squeaking leather that made him think of secrets and conspiracies? Did he even have to ask?

“Pull over, Ramón,” she said.

Shit! It was over. Just like that. He wasn’t sure how she had caught on to him so quickly, but the Madam was not stupid. He’d known that for a very long time. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead as his mouth went dry.

“Why do you want me to pull over, Madam?” he asked. This time, he did sound scared. He detected the telltale quiver in his voice, and he was sure she heard it, too.

What you afraid for, old man? You got the gun!

Didn’t matter. He was sure if he tried to wrestle it out of the newspaper, it would get tangled up in something invisible, like his own bad luck. Likely, she had a gun of her own pointed into the back of his seat.

“Don’t question me, Ramón. Do it. Now.”

Blinking back the sweat now stinging his eyes, he guided the car to the side of the sparsely busy highway. Once he put it into park, the Madam got out of the car and opened the front passenger door. Sliding aside the folded newspaper like it was so much trash, and nearly making Ramón cry out in the process, she closed the door against the sound of traffic and wind. He noticed with some relief that her hands were empty, and the knot in his gut loosened just a tad. But the Madam herself was a weapon, and he knew from the stories and accounts he’d witnessed himself of her brutality with the girls at the Willow over the years that she was the kind of woman who liked using her hands.

And if she tries, you know what to do.

“There, this is much better,” she said. “Now we can talk face to face. I don’t like doing business with the back of a man’s head, unless I’m pegging him.” Her grin was cat-like as she let that horrendous visual sink in for him.

“O-okay,” he croaked.

“You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”

He nudged his hand closer to the rolled up newspaper, keeping his eyes on hers. “No, Madam.”

“It’s okay. I know you are. You should be. I wouldn’t be doing my job if you weren’t. But you’ve been good to me and this family, and I think it’s time you and I take our relationship up to the next level. I think maybe we should become partners of sorts. What do you say?”

Ramón gaped. He’d been expecting her to confront him about the money he stole, but now . . . No, don’t let your guard down. She could still be roping you in for something, old man. She’s like a spider sitting in the middle of a web just waiting for the flies to come to her. “Partners? How so?”

“Ballas pays in cash every time. Isn’t that odd?”

Of course, it was odd. No one paid cash for anything anymore, let alone a half-million dollars for a hooker. Or a million.

“Sure,” he said.

“You think he keeps all that money in his house? He doesn’t really seem the banking type.”

Ramón shrugged. “It’s possible.” He knew where she was going with this, but he continued to let her lead the conversation. It was better that way.

“I had some people in higher places look into him awhile ago. He hasn’t done anything public or business related in well over a decade. No stock trades, nothing. His fortune was all in a blind trust of some sort until he withdrew everything one day, and there hasn’t been a peep from him since. Most people think he’s dead, though there hasn’t been any official note made of it. He owns the deed to his estate and the property taxes are all paid up.”

“Doesn’t he have any friends or family who can vouch for him?”

“Well, I’m sure you know the ordeal with his disappeared wife. She may still be out there somewhere, though after twenty years I doubt it. That’s the last really official mention of him anywhere.”

“He probably killed her,” Ramón said.

The Madam waved her hand. “Doesn’t matter, and if he did, all the better. That way there is no one who could lay claim to that money. We’re going up there, but getting the girl back is inconsequential at this point. For all I know he accidentally killed her during whatever nutty ritual he performs on them. I’m mildly displeased with that, but even angrier at his blatant disregard for providing me additional compensation in this transaction. I plan to address that issue, and then put the sorry son of a bitch out of his misery for good. The effects of these visits on my girls are becoming a bit of a liability, as you might imagine. At some point, Victor will start asking about some of the girls who’ve gone missing. They can’t all be runaways and suicides.”

Ramón stared at her. The casual way in which she spoke about the girls who came out of the Ballas house was chilling. They weren’t just a little bruised and upset. They were bleeding, mutilated, and catatonic. And they didn’t just “go missing” either.

“What do you plan to do?” he asked.

“Not I. We. This is a partnership, remember?”

Ramón knew better than that. The Madam’s idea of a partnership was someone being her willing slave. It was essentially what they had now. “What do you want me to do?”

“I have a gun in my purse. You shoot the son of a bitch, then we raid the house to find his stash. Knowing him, he probably has the shit stuffed in the walls and mattresses. Either way, I don’t think anyone will hear the gunshot. We’ll have time to hunt. We won’t have to stage a robbery, because it will actually be one.”

Ramón noticed she hadn’t mentioned how they would divide the spoils. “How does it get split up? The money?”

“Well, I suppose it depends on how much we find. But I’m willing to cut you twenty percent.”

Twenty? She ain’t even going to tell you it’s rainin’ when she pisses on you, old man. She’s just gonna keep on pissin’ and hope you like how warm it feels.

“That ain’t a lot. We’re talking about murder here.”

Her face seemed to morph into hard white stone, and he inched his hand a little closer to the roll of newspaper holding his only ticket to freedom at this point. “Don’t play coy with me, Ramón. Don’t forget I know who you are. Who you really are. You should be as acquainted with killing a person as you are with the length of your cock.” She looked him up and down, eyes calculating every inch of him. He knew what she was going to say next. The certainty of it made him sick to his stomach, but he couldn’t stop her. “Or maybe it would be easier if he was a woman. Maybe we should hold a séance and ask your wife what she has to say about that.”

“Shut up! Don’t you ever talk about her again, bruja!”

His outburst made her lean back a little, but she didn’t look afraid. He wanted her to be. He wanted her to be terrified at his rage, enough to be distracted while he grabbed the gun from the newspaper, but she’d probably seen much worse in her line of work. If she was scared, she had one hell of a poker face.

“There there, little perro. Don’t get all frothy. I’m just trying to properly motivate you. Save your rage for Ballas. Now, tell me again everything you saw this morning so we know how to go in and handle this thing.”

“Like I already told you, it wasn’t that much different than before. I walked in, but there was no girl, just the money and a note. I grabbed the cases and got out of there.”

The Madam grew colder, stiller, like the haunted idol of a lost civilization, and Ramón knew he’d just made a tiny but very fatal mistake. “I’m sorry, but did you just say cases? As in more than one?”

There was no time to do anything now but act. Fumbling for the newspaper and the Derringer hidden inside it, he prayed his gunslinging muscles weren’t too rusty. In the same instance, the Madam was reaching back for her purse, but even if the pistol had somehow become entangled, as Ramón had envisioned it might, he still would have beaten her to the punch.

He aimed the pistol at her and cocked it. The Madam, again no dummy and probably no stranger to the sound of guns, halted in her tracks. A wild thought flew through his mind that the thing would misfire when he pulled the trigger. It hadn’t been fired in over ten years. The shells, custom loaded and unpredictable in the best of times, were just as old if not older. The odds weren’t as much in his favor as he would have wanted, but she didn’t have to know that.

“Hold it right there, bruja.” The Madam uttered a string of curses and returned to her seat. Even with a gun pointed at her from two feet away, she didn’t look afraid. Just amused, like a dog had just rolled over and played dead in front of her.

“Well played, Ramón. You don’t have to tell me how you managed to get a gun past Victor’s men. I just want to know where my money is.”

“Even now you still think you’re in charge of the situation. Is it a sickness you got or something?”

“It’s called narcissism. But it’s also called sense. Even if you shoot me with that toy gun, I doubt it will kill me.”

He leveled the gun at her face. “At this distance, you really want to take that bet? I thought you were smarter than that.”

“Give me my money. Now.”

“Telling yourself something is yours don’t make it yours. It’s finders keepers in this business.”

“Give me my fucking money, you spic fuck!” She was finally furious, nostrils flaring, eyes blazing. He didn’t answer, just continued pointing the pistol at her, his senses ratcheted up to maximum. He could have heard a fly’s wings flapping.

“You won’t get far with it, and you know that,” she said. “Our net is huge. If you cut a fart and pick your nose, we’ll know about it.”

Ramón grinned and pushed all his chips into the middle of the table. These were the moments he used to live for. The gamble, the bluff.

“I know people, too. You said it yourself, you know who I am. Who I really am. Maybe I got people all up and down the east coast and way down in Juarez just waiting to get a call from their old friend Ramón Gutierrez. You and Victor want a war on your hands? I can make that happen.”

“Your old network is just a bunch of low-level hoods. Wetback beaner scum, probably either dead or in prison.” She spat the epithets out like poisoned blow darts, but there wasn’t a whole lot of force behind them. It meant she was unsettled, too angry to tell if he was lying.

You’re about to kill another unarmed woman. Sure, she’s a monster, but it doesn’t look like you’ve changed much at all to me, old man.

“I’m leaving the Willow,” he said. “I’m done working for you. That second case of money is my severance pay.”

“Severance! You owe us, remember?”

“Not anymore, I don’t. Now get out of the car.” He had no intention of shooting her here. The mess and the damage to his ears would be enormous. There were woods just up the embankment a few feet away. He would do it there. Let her rot in a graveyard of fast food bags and plastic bottles. It was better than what she deserved.

The Madam’s jaw dropped. “Who are you to tell me to get out of my—”

He grabbed her throat, shoving her hard against the door. The metal of her hair clips clacked against the glass as she cried out for a brief second. Then he squeezed. Not hard. Just enough to scare her. He relished the way her fear and shock filled him with that old warmth, the way the sound of his house key sliding into his door lock would make him feel after a long day’s work, like there was comfort and contentment only seconds away with one turn of the key. One quick snap of neck bone. He had her. He had her! He wanted to deny that warmth, run screaming from it, but it was there. His old friend Murder, patiently waiting for him to turn back up looking for another favor.

He pressed the Derringer’s barrel against the shelf of her jaw for emphasis. “If you don’t reach down and open this car door, I’m going to squeeze your throat until you’re dead.” Just squeeze anyway. This is the cleaner way to do it. No need to use the gun.

No. He wanted her out of the car first. He didn’t want to be seen dragging a body into the trees. He was done doing the heavy lifting for these assholes.

“Okay, all right,” she croaked. Tears were welling up in her eyes. “Please let go . . . my head.”

He sighed and released his hand, but he kept the gun trained on her. She rubbed the back of her head, uttering a nervous giggle. “You gave me one hell of a bump, Ramón. I think I might get a knot back there.”

Not like you’ll have to worry about that in a few minutes. “Open the door.”

“Yes, all right, okay. Just don’t hurt me.”

He watched one of her pale white hands reach for the door handle, but he saw a flash of silver in the other. She struck fast, like an angry cobra.

A hot sting erupted in the side of his neck, and he felt the warm trickle of blood. Then she was on him, a fury of red hair and black wool and leather, clawing at his face with one hand and grabbing at the Derringer with the other. He’d nearly dropped it in his shock at being stabbed in the neck, and would have if not for the friction of his glove. “You bitch! Get off me!”

She was growling like a crazed mountain cat. Before she could wrest the tiny pistol away, he pulled the trigger twice. The loud pops made his ears immediately ring, and he smelled the reek of discharged powder and felt the burn of tiny shot fragments burn his neck and face.

Her high-pitched gasp gave way to screams, and she fell back against the door again. One side of her face and neck was blackened with specks of shot. Her right eye was little more than a bleeding, gore-filled socket. Blood ran from her mouth in rivulets. She was lucky to still have her head. If the shells hadn’t been so old and if he’d fired point blank, she might not have. But the damage to her face was devastating, nonetheless.

“What did you do what did you do?” she screamed. Her voice sounded muffled in his temporarily—at least he hoped it was temporary—ruined ears, but he could tell the words weren’t well formed. The shot to the face shattered several of her teeth. “Oh you crazy fucking spic, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you!”

Using the last of his adrenaline, he grabbed her around the neck again and slammed her head against the glass twice, hard enough to crack it. He was going to have to end her here after all. But he glanced out the rearview mirror and saw a large line of traffic coming, a wash of white light from their headlamps filling the interior of the Lincoln, exposing the impending murder to all who looked.

They ain’t gonna see, old man. These windows are tinted blacker than your asshole.

Oh, but they might see. And what if one of them pulled over? Some Good Samaritan on his way home after a long day at the paper mill, wanting to see if Ramón needed a jump or help changing out a flat. Worse yet, what if it was a cop? He looked at the Madam’s oozing, unconscious face. She didn’t have long for this earth anyway. It was a gamble letting her go alive, but he lived for the odds.

He opened the door and pushed her out onto the weedy gravel. Looking in the backseat, he grabbed the black purse sitting on the seat. Inside, as she’d promised, was her own firearm. And an enormous one at that. He plucked out the .357 Magnum and then tossed the otherwise empty handbag out the door. He watched it land in the tall grass about five feet away from her body and then slammed the door shut.

Distantly, he felt sticky dampness on his shoulder and chest. Blood from where she’d stabbed him in the neck with whatever weapon she’d been concealing in her hair. Clever bruja, right up to the end. But he’d deal with his own cuts and scratches soon enough. The money wasn’t far from here, and if the injury was worse than he thought, well, he could always buy himself a doctor.

Chapter 6

Madam’s Punishment

She was first aware of a hot meteor of agony on the right side of her face when she opened her eyes to find she was lying in her own bed. No, that wasn’t right. Eye. She opened her eye, for there was only one now. The other, once she reached up tentatively to confirm it, was nothing more than an empty socket covered with thick gauze and she remembered exactly why that was so, remembered the moment the orbit popped, and the gush of fluid and blood running down her cheek. Her body shrieked for the other one, like a mother frantically calling out for her lost child. That thieving and traitorous spic shot it out with his little pop gun and left her for dead on the side of the road. And now only one thought stood out in her mind, amid all the rabble. I'm no longer whole. Part of me is now gone forever. But she’d survived, by some stupid luck. If the beaner hadn’t tossed out her purse along with her body, the outcome would have been very different. She had a vague memory of hearing her phone ringing a few feet away from where she lay, in a ditch alongside the highway, and then dragging herself into the weeds to answer it. It had been Victor calling to hector her about the incident with the guido earlier that morning, the guido who was now the very least of her problems. Of course, her dear brother soon found out there were much bigger fish to fry. Their trusted little dog had turned on its masters, provoking a war with the family that could bring down everything she had spent years building.

She lay on her expensive sheets trying to piece everything together. Not only what happened in the car, but before that. How long had he been planning this? She refused to believe this was a last-minute thing. This level of fuckery had to take some serious planning, even for a veteran like him. But the more she tried to think, the foggier everything became. Part of it was the trauma of losing one of her eyes and taking a severe beating to her ego and dignity, but the other was the knock to the head. Among other horrors like “penetrating eye injury” and “major tissue damage to the right breast,” she’d heard the words “moderate concussion” passed between Victor and Corwin Huxley, a trusted man who, due to a minor oversight during a c-section twenty years ago, lost his medical license but was still quite serviceable as an off-the-books family doctor. Huxley was the one who made sure all the girls who came back from the Ballas house didn’t bleed to death in the Weeping Willow’s basement. He was also good for removing bullets or, in the case of the Madam, a few dozen birdshot pellets.

During another brief break in the morphine fog, she heard Huxley tell Victor if she’d taken the full load of shot to the face, she would be breathing through a straw, if at all. Lucky her.

There were other injuries she was acutely aware of, but did not want to examine too closely. Her broken teeth. Her burnt and pockmarked neck and shoulder, but most of all her ruined right breast. The latter felt like it had been flayed open and seared with a branding iron. It would be quite some time before she would be able to bring herself to even look at it, but she didn’t need a mirror to know Ramón Gutierrez had succeeded in not only stealing a half million dollars of her money, but he’d also stolen half her sight, half her breasts, and the entirety of her livelihood.

How long had she been here, fading in and out of consciousness on a steady stream of morphine? She guessed it had been a day or two, but only because that was the maximum amount of lost time she was willing to accept. Any longer, and Ramón was likely south of the border somewhere. That didn’t mean she would give up the search. She’d have every man at her disposal sniff that armpit of a country so long and hard they’d come out smelling like tortillas and speaking Spanish. And after they found him, they would drag him right back up here so she could put him back to work. Not in the cushy little driver’s job he had before, but as her personal boot cleaner, licking every speck of dirt and dog shit off the soles until they shined like mirrors.

First, though, she needed to find out who was minding the place while she was sacked out up here like some pathetic invalid. She sat up and immediately the world swayed back and forth, acid scalding the back of her stomach, churning like an old washing machine. There was a large ceramic bowl on the bedside table, and she made it just in time to puke up a caustic glut of water and bile.

The door opened and Victor peeked his head in. “Ah, she awakes!” He let himself in, his dentures glowing in the room’s dim light as he smiled. The Madam’s stomach gave another lurch at the sight of him, but it was an empty one. She spat into the basin and set it aside. This particular visitor didn’t improve her mood, but then again it rarely did. Victor Cassini was the vainest man she’d ever met, not a single dyed strand of hair out of place on his perfectly manicured head. He’d just pushed past sixty and was nearly twenty years her senior, but after a few lifts here, tucks there, and strategic injections of Botox, he looked almost younger than her forty-two. He reminded her of a falsely genteel politician, the kind who waxed folksy with the commoners, but behind closed doors would slit throats between sips of coffee. And he had done that, quite literally, on dozens of occasions.

“Who’s running my business?” she asked as her brother walked toward the bed. She wanted to get up, not let him stand over her as he so often did, but she was afraid of vomiting again.

“Not to worry, Tessa. Your flock is all in order. I’ve been seeing to everything since your unfortunate decommissioning.” He unbuttoned his suit jacket and sat down on the side of the bed with a sigh. “Look at you. My dear, beautiful Tessa.” He reached out to caress her cheek with a hand that looked about twice as old as his face, age spots and all.

She slapped his hand away. “Don’t patronize me. I know I’m exactly where you want me to be.”

He affected another disappointed sigh. “You think so little of me.”

“I may be short an eye, Victor, but I can recognize bullshit when I see it. Now where are my cigarettes?”

“I don’t think you’ll want to do that with your head injury.”

“And what are you, my father?”

A brief look passed between the two of them, acknowledging the sickening irony of that otherwise flippant remark, and the Madam swung her legs out of bed. “Never mind, I’ll get them myself.”

Victor reached out to steady her, but she pushed him back down on the bed. “I don’t need your help.” She didn’t even want to look at him. Would have risked fainting or vomiting on the floor again just to avoid it. Luckily, neither thing happened. After a brief wash of wooziness, she made her way over to her vanity table, where the Dunhills waited for her like patient little lieutenants.

She didn’t want to look in the mirror when she sat down, but it was inevitable that she examine the damage at some point. At least the damage to her face. She didn’t think she’d ever have the courage to look at her breast again. The missing eye she could probably handle eventually, but she’d built a livelihood on everything below the neck, and even if she didn’t plan to use it for such ends anymore, seeing it destroyed would be like sifting a priceless heirloom out of the remains of a fire. What she saw when she glanced into the mirror made her want to puke all over again. The bandage over her obliterated right eye was crusted around the edges with blood-tinted yellow fluid. Red welts from the shot pellets peppered her cheek and neck like angry acne. Her teeth weren’t as bad as she thought. Incisors still intact, but she had two jagged canines and a couple of others that would have to be addressed before she cut her tongue to ribbons on them. That was all she could stomach. She turned away from the mirror and lit her cigarette.

“How long have I been out?”

“About a week.”

She choked out a lungful of smoke. “A week? That Mexican son of a bitch.”

Victor raised his hand. “Dear Tessa, don’t upset yourself.”

“Who you brought here, I might add. The one you said was such a trustworthy little lapdog, the one who just ruined me, he’s likely kicking his feet up in some roach-infested cantina on the other side of the Rio Grande on my dime.”

“Tessa. Shut up.” He didn’t raise his voice. Victor Cassini rarely had to. But it was now sapped of that congenial old man cheer, so like Ronald Reagan, that would reel in so many schmucks over the years and make them feel secure right before he strung them up and divested them of their dignity and their testicles, or their sexual freedom if they happened to be of the female persuasion. The Madam didn’t take orders from anybody except Victor, the only one who could use her real name without impunity. She closed her mouth and ran her tongue along the jagged edges of her ruined teeth. It hurt and felt good at the same time.

“We have a larger issue than the whereabouts of Ramón Gutierrez right now.”

She gaped at him. “You have to be joking. What could be more important than nabbing that bastard?”

Victor looked at her for a moment, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. But she wouldn’t shiver. Wouldn’t look away. “You know, I remember Hank Ballas. Nice guy. A little squirrely, but nice. Long ago, he handled some trading for Dante. He dropped out of the public eye after awhile, but I know occasionally he would order some companionship from this here little establishment. Particularly after his wife vanished like that. It was a long time ago, not long after you took over here, but you remember that, I’m sure. He paid a lot. Liked to rough up the girls a little, but nothing too serious. Nothing that would require, you know, serious medical attention or anything.”

Her stomach dropped down into her pelvis. She knew where this was heading, and it wasn’t good. Not at all. Don’t look down. Don’t you dare fucking look down now.

Victor stood up and started pacing a little. It was a thing he did when he was winding up, and the Madam could feel her ass sinking into the bench she sat on. “Then we didn’t hear from him at all after 1990 or so. Withdrew from all his business and everything. Hell, I thought the man was dead. He’d certainly be old enough, and living like a hermit in that old house of his. . . It’d kill just about anybody after awhile, wouldn’t it, Tessa?” He stopped pacing and looked at her, and she realized it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“Yes.” That’s all she would say, all she would allow right now.

“But then, when was it, sometime around Christmas of 2001, he started contacting the Willow again, asking for girls again?” He looked at her, waiting for another answer, and it was then her eye finally dropped to her lap, unable to fully support the load that two eyes used to share in this battle of wills.

“I suppose.”

Victor laughed and then shook his head. “You suppose. That’s cute. That’s the same wording your little accomplice Doctor Huxley used when I spoke with him about this just a little while ago. While he could still talk, that was. Before I made him stop talking, he told me a lot. Oh did he tell me loads about what has been going on around here on your watch. You know, I thought you were every bit as cold and twisted as me, but even for you, Tessa . . . this is low. So very low, on so many levels.”

Fuck. How did he even find out? The only record she kept of the Ballas-related transactions was in her safe deposit box. With the money. Her money. Of course he took the opportunity with her brief coma to snoop into her private affairs, not the least of which was a certain box locked away in a vault at First National Bank. Victor had somehow gained access to it, which shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. Some things had to be sacred, dammit! But Victor always got what he wanted, and because of that she was now in her least favorite place. Up against the wall. If she made him out to look a fool, he’d hurt her, or worse. Huxley had been a trusted member of their inner-circle for years. Victor had helped put the man’s son through college. And now he was just another casualty.

“If you want your cut of the proceeds, take it and get the hell out of here.”

Victor got up from the bed and came to her. He squatted down on his hunkers with the sort of ease that belied his age and placed his hand on her knee. There was the barest amount of steel in that grip, telling her a wrong move would be her last. Any other time, she may have been more of a match for him, but not now. She was already weaker than a runt kitten. But who was she kidding? Even when she was at her prime, Victor always won. It was all Victor knew how to do. He was like a slot machine that always hit the jackpot. “I know you only have a passing familiarity with the concept of principle. You whores don’t have much use for it, I know, but you have to at least know what it is intellectually. Don’t you?”

He was entering lecture mode. It was his favorite part, where he got high off the sound of his own voice before the real pain began. The Madam’s head throbbed in time with her heart, and she swallowed, her dry throat clicking like the cock of the gun that had stolen her face. “Of course I know what it is.” She hated the meek quiver sneaking into her voice. Hated it.

“Would you agree that it’s about rules? About certain governing tenets?” He squeezed harder, his fingers digging painfully into the thin flesh on either side of her kneecap. She jerked, and his grin widened.

“Y-yes.”

“And would you say that your recent actions have violated certain rules and governing tenets? Principles, as it were?” Don’t lie to me, bitch, his eyes said. Those eyes surrounded with artificially stretched and plumped up flesh to deny their age. Don’t you dare fucking lie to me or I’ll eat you.

“What do you want? Just tell me.” There she was, begging. Acquiescing. Disgust and self-loathing invaded her like a hungry virus.

His other hand stole out and wrapped around her throat. For the second time in recent memory, a man was choking her. Only this man wasn’t desperate and looking to save his own ass; he was crazy and lethal and he loved to inflict pain the way puppies loved to chew on shoes. “I want you to tell me why you’ve been holding out on me. Why you have almost ten million dollars stashed away from your dear old brother.”

With every word, he squeezed her throat tighter and tighter so when she choked out the only answer she could think of, it came out in a grating whisper. “A gift.”

His grip loosened. “Say again?”

“A gift. I was saving it as a gift. For you.” A truth wrapped in a lie, but maybe that would be enough.

He dropped his hands and leaned back, the coldness in his face filled so suddenly with warmth it was as if someone had flipped a switch behind his face. It was that ease with which he’d changed that frightened her and most anyone who associated with Victor.

“A gift! Ah, good. Well, the family thanks you for your generosity, sister. I’ll make sure we put it to good use.” He stood up, and the Madam breathed a heavy sigh. But this wasn’t over. She knew her brother. Knew him in ways that no woman should ever know her brother.

“But the money that Ramón stole. I want it back.”

He chuckled. “Of course you do. But I think we both know that isn’t going to happen.”

The Madam couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You just expect me to let him walk away with my—your—money?”

Victor stripped off his jacket and laid it on the trunk at the end of her bed. His leather shoulder holster, which held his trusty 1911, crisscrossed against the wrinkled white cotton back of his shirt; a man like Victor was always armed, but it wasn’t the gun that worried the Madam. “Like most of us, Ramón will get what’s coming to him eventually, but right now, I have to admit I kind of like him.”

“What? Why?”

“Because of what I’m seeing right here. As far as I’m concerned, Senõr Gutierrez did me a very big favor. After this incident revealed your surprise gift to me, I think I'll consider the five hundred grand payment to Ramón for services rendered.”

The Madam’s face grew hot with rage. “I cannot believe what I’m hearing right now!”

“I know you’re lying to me,” Victor said. “You know I know that. You had big plans. Ten million dollars. Why, that’s enough money to leverage against someone you don’t much like, maybe with the Commission? I’ve made some calls, but nobody wants to talk. Not yet, anyway. But I’m good at making people talk.” He began loosening his belt, and the Madam closed her eyes.

Not this. Not now. Not after this steady stream of insults and indignities. “Victor, you don’t have to do this.”

“You dumb fucking whore.” He slid his belt out so fast she couldn’t see it. Only hear the snap followed by the searing sting of leather across her cheek. Her empty eye socket gushed something hot and thick while the one remaining eye watered, blurring the vision of the raving lunatic leering over her. “You never did understand the rules, did you? Your mother understood, at least after a while, when she still had her tongue. But you . . . you whore freak, you never learned. Not after everything I’ve given you. Everything I’ve sacrificed to protect you from what people would do if they found out what you were, you still never learned your place in this family.”

He grabbed her shoulders and flung her toward the bed. She stumbled, arms pinwheeling for balance, and hit the footboard post with her abdomen, knocking the wind out of her lungs. Then he was on her, that familiar weight and brutish strength, always outmatching hers even when she was at her physical peak. It was now, as he shoved her gown up over her hips and her panties away from the place he liked to stick his gun—the other gun, the one that was attached to him and craved unspeakable things—the switch in her brain flipped and took her to the place she’d built up in her mind a long time ago for just such a purpose.

It used to be a real place. It was the old boathouse by the lake, where she used to sit with the man she chose to call father, never mind the biology, when they both needed to escape the house, when Victor was doing things to Amelia, his sister, his brood mare and the Madam’s biological mother, as her chosen father later confessed when the girl was only ten. All the while, Dante’s wife sat locked away up in her room in an opium haze, no longer able to face the sickness that afflicted her son and deformed their family tree enough to produce the redheaded abomination nobody wanted or could even look at, save Dante.

The rickety structure smelled like old smoke, wet wood, and Dante’s aftershave. There was a record player and a tall stack of 45s ranging from Italian opera to Chuck Berry, and a wobbly old table with a chessboard painted right onto the wood. He’d taught her to play when she was six, and she took to it naturally. The two of them eventually became fierce competitors and would go at it for hours. The only sound as they played, other than the steady clicks from the time clock they used and the knocks of their weighted pieces marching across the table, was the comforting thump of their fishing boat against its mooring, when the wind disturbed the water.

They’d talked on occasion too. Talked about a lot of things. The family business, namely, but there were other topics that eventually came up, like her incestuous lineage.

“I’m not your father, but I will be if you want me to be,” he’d said, his voice as rough as dry gravel after he’d choked out the truth. The taboo didn’t really occur to her until later, after Amelia killed herself by drinking household cleaner. Then it had become very clear. And when Dante died some years later of cancer and advanced dementia, Victor showed how ruthless he could be, shutting her away in the Weeping Willow, thinking she’d never say boo to protest, only enjoy the responsibility and the illusion of power and control the Willow provided. But it was only a bandage on a deep and festering wound.

Dante Cassini had been a powerful and imposingly handsome man in his professional life, feared by a few and respected by most. But in the boathouse, he wore dirty jeans and old flannel shirts. His hair stood up in unkempt swirls and spikes, his chin and cheeks covered with gray stubble, his skin as creased as a pair of crunched up khakis. In the boathouse, he smoked cheap Camels instead of the Dunhills the Madam later took up smoking. In the boathouse, he drank Wild Irish Rose instead of his usual Amarone. In the boathouse, he looked old enough to be her grandfather (though she supposed that’s what he technically was), broken by the monster that had sprung from his loins as well as those of the woman who should have been her mother in a more natural order of things. But Nora also punched her ticket early, hanging herself in the very same boathouse, using their sacred chess table to lift herself high enough to get the job done.

The girl, who would one day refer to herself only as the Madam, used to think she could see the cowardly woman’s shoe prints in the painted wood grain, or the shadow of her feet swinging back and forth over the faded black and white grid. But she and Dante continued, despite his terrible grief and her own discomfort. They would sacrifice their pawns and castle their kings and discuss how she would one day bring Victor to his knees.

Dante wasn’t there now. Not even her imagination’s projection of him could allow him to witness this shameful turn of events. But the chess pieces were lined up, waiting for battle. And she sat at the table in her mind, playing the game against herself, the clicks of the timer masking Victor’s grunts.

***

She curled into a ball on the bed and clutched a pillow to her chest. He never stayed long after he finished, and she considered that a mercy. The Madam wanted to believe it was some vestige of post-rape shame causing him to dress hastily and bolt out of the room with his eyes firmly fixed on the floor, but she knew better. She was a secret fuck doll he used to squelch his unnatural urges and then tossed aside without thought or care, at least until he was ready for her again. To add to the degradation this time, he walked away with everything that would have helped her ruin him.

Rage filled the bleak emptiness inside her and she punched the pillow. Pain from her ruined right breast slammed through her with the effort. Her head was the purest blinding white agony. She screamed into a pillow until her throat hurt. “Motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker!” Rolling over to her bedside table, she picked up the orange bottle of oxycodone, popped three of them, and lay back down.  Soon, none of this would seem as consequential. That was the beauty of drugs. It was a miracle she’d never become an addict, given everything she’d been through. She tried many years ago to obliterate her mind that way, but eventually she realized long laid plans of retribution were her drug, and right now, with those plans as ruined as her right eye, she was in some pretty serious withdrawal.

But she wasn’t done yet. That was the thing about plans; they were in infinite supply.

A few members of the Commission were already on her side. Okay, that might have been overstating it. There was one man she could count on for sure. As she fumbled for the phone on the bedside table, she hoped to God Victor hadn’t gotten to him yet.

Chapter 7

Nina and the Woman in Red

She awoke to the sound of flies buzzing around her face. Waving her hand around in a disgusted cry, she realized things were different. Not different enough—after all, she was still alive—but things had definitely changed. She wasn’t tied up, for one thing. But why?

Maybe he doesn’t think you’d be able to run if you tried, she thought. In her mother’s voice, naturally, but not the melodic one that had tried to lure her into madness earlier. It was the more recent voice, the one roughened by years of drinking, cigarettes, and of course the lupus. No one would ever beat the unflappable Janie Quick in the race to kill all hope. Of course, her mother was probably right. The thought of walking, let alone running from this place in her current condition was laughable. If her deformed and demented captor (whom she’d taken to calling Junior) thought she had any chance of getting away, he would have tied her up. After all, there was no shortage of rope in this dump.

He had cleaned her up, though. She no longer smelled of her own blood and piss, and there appeared to be fresh linens on the bed. Fresher, anyway. They still smelled of old dirt, like everything else in this place. Instead of the ruined white dress, she now wore a baby doll-style nightgown that looked a hideous shade of seafoam green in the room’s blue lights. A quick peek under the blanket showed that its hem stopped just above her knee. An image of her limp, unconscious self hanging from ropes like an unused puppet as Junior changed the bedding and her clothes gave her chills. But she felt a murky sort of gratitude, nonetheless.

Something else had changed: there was food. A sandwich, an overripe banana, and a little carton of whole milk—a child’s school lunch—sat on a little tray beside the bed. Flies were crawling all over it, but that didn’t even faze her. It was food. Real sustenance. Her stomach gave a twisting growl, and she reached for the plate. The flies scattered at once, and she didn’t bother checking to see what was between the slices of cheap white bread before she bit into it.

The taste, so familiar to her blue-collar tongue, made her weep. Bologna, American cheese, mayo. She’d grown up on this stuff. The only thing missing to make it complete was a layer of potato chips between the meat and cheese. Tears coursed down her face as she scarfed down the sandwich in huge bites. It wasn’t just because she’d been starving. Something about the simple civility of a sandwich after everything she’d endured made her feel like someone was hugging her. It reminded her of her long lost independence, of a time when even the notion of leaving home seemed alien, absurd. Why would anyone want to leave home when there was bologna and cheese in the fridge?

She initially feared the milk would be sour, but she checked the expiration date—October 6th—and deduced that she couldn’t have been here for three weeks already and decided to drink it anyway. It was full fat, cold and creamy on her tongue. She alternated bites of the banana with sips of the milk and it felt almost like a milkshake.  At least now you have some reference for time, she thought. It was still either late September or early October. She’d come here on the nineteenth.

Of course, milk could be kept past its expiration date. There was that. But she couldn’t imagine given the continued state of her pain that it had been more than a week since the . . .  incident.

He could be working you over in your sleep, you know. Slipping you the cactus and drugging you through the IV so you’d never know.

The thought filled her with such horror that she didn’t breathe for several seconds. Then she gave her head a brisk shake. “Fuck you, Mom,” she said to the empty room. God, she hoped she was alone. For all she knew, Junior could be hanging out above, watching her from his creepy web. She glanced up, but didn’t see him. At the end of the bed sat the ominous wing chair Hank Ballas had sat in her first night here. The shadows were too deep for her to tell whether he was still sitting there, waiting for his demented son to come back and play with him or put him to work.

No. No, she didn’t think he’d violated her again. Not that way. She didn’t believe it for the simple fact she was still alive. Her body would not survive such trauma a second time, even if he’d let her heal completely before doing it again.

But he could have other horrors at his disposal. More plans for her. Why else was he keeping her alive? You’re going to become his companion, sweetheart. Finally, you found yourself a man who will move heaven and earth to please you. Or at least corpses on strings.

The food in her stomach took an upward lurch, looking for an early escape. Pushing all the thoughts away, she tried to relax. She needed the food. Needed her strength so she could heal and get out of here. Already her eyelids were starting to feel heavy again. He must have slipped drugs into the food. Just as well. The more she could sleep through this nightmare, the better.

Before she slipped away, she heard the door open and footsteps. The fog encroaching on her mind blew back a little on the breeze of her surprise. Footsteps. No one in this house walked. They rolled on wheels and crawled on fake webs like spiders and danced under the manipulation of a complex system of ropes and pulleys, but they didn’t walk on two feet. So who the fuck was this? A rescuer?

“Ramón?” she called out, knowing better but thinking it was worth a shot.

Out of the shadowy pools cast by the blue lights came a large slab of a figure draped in cloth. Red or orange was Nina’s guess. Not Ramón. A woman. Dark-skinned, perhaps Indian. Older, but not too old. Round and thick, but not exactly fat. Definitely not friendly or warm, like the color of her sari suggested. Her face was the obsidian twin to the Madam’s cold ivory, with the same stone gaze that killed all hopes of friendship and warmth, but none of that mattered. What mattered was this was another living and breathing person, right here, right now. This person could help her!

The drug-induced daze, the sad agony between her legs, the perpetual despair of her life and her abysmal current predicament making her want to seek shelter in death or madness—all of that  retreated in the warm sunlight of Someone Else, like beetles scurrying out of the daylight. She pushed herself up on the heels of her hands.

“Please help me. Call the cops. Help me out of here. The man who lives here, he’s crazy. He’s going to kill me.”

The woman shushed, pressing a calloused hand against Nina’s forehead, seemingly to both take her temperature and push her back down to the pillow. She then picked up one of Nina’s hands and pressed two fingers against her wrist.

“What are you doing?” Nina said. “Didn’t you hear me? I need your help. Please, I need you to—”

The woman’s eyes met hers, and Nina saw nothing that would help her. No sympathy. Not even any real comprehension. Did she even speak English? Next, the woman ripped back the blanket over Nina’s legs and placed her cold hand on her knees. Nina’s heart began to pound. “Don’t touch me! No, no please it hurts!”

There was tightness around the woman’s mouth that could have meant either sympathy or lack of patience. Then it became clear in Nina’s over-stretched mind. The woman was working for Junior. Of course he’d had help all this time. How else could he get food and other basic necessities, or help cleaning up and dressing his tortured prisoners? Who else could run IVs and make sure she didn’t bleed to death? Someone had to facilitate these antics for the resident whacko. Tears welled up in Nina’s eyes.

“Please don’t hurt me anymore. I . . . I can’t take it. I need help. I need someone to get me out of here. I need a . . . a doctor. Do you understand?”

The woman sighed. “I am a nurse. How else do you think you’ve remained alive this whole time?” She had an accent, but at least she spoke English. Middle Eastern or Indian, Nina couldn’t really tell. She’d never been very good at that sort of thing.

Confusion worried her gut. So many questions, she didn’t know where to begin. “You’re . . . you’re working for him? But how can you do that? How can you let him do this to me? To the other girls?”

“You really should be sedated for the examination.” Expressionless. Flat. All business. There would be no sisterhood here, but then again, Nina had never really lucked out with the same sex that way.

She didn’t want to be put to sleep. Not for this. The reasoning was simple, really. There was someone here she could actually talk to, and that was something she craved even more than food. A live human face, or at least one that appeared human from the outside. “You don’t need to sedate me,” Nina said. “Just do it. I can take it. Please.”

“No screams. If you scream, I put you out.”

Nina nodded, pressed her lips together, and suffered through the burning agony of having her wounded parts exposed to the air, but she did not scream. Couldn’t even if she’d wanted to. Her ruined throat couldn’t produce much above a low mutter.

The nurse worked quickly, replacing a large blood-soaked pad with a clean one she pulled from the bedside table. Next, she bent over and Nina heard liquid running into a bucket. It was a catheter bag. Had to be. How else to explain why she wasn’t covered in her own piss?

“Okay, knees together,” the nurse said, and Nina did so with relief. Beads of sweat ran from her forehead and into her eyes, down her temples. After straightening Nina’s gown and pulling the blanket back up, the nurse stepped outside the room with a plastic bucket in hand. There was a bathroom next door. At least she knew that now. Nina breathed a sigh of relief. The exam wasn’t as horrible as she’d expected.

When the nurse came back, Nina said, “Tell me how bad things are. Down there.”

The woman’s eyes glanced up sharply at hers and then away again. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

She didn’t answer, instead reaching into her pocket. Nina saw the syringe in her hand. Drugs, sweet drugs. A very large part of her wanted them, but the thinking part of her didn’t. Not yet.

“Please, don’t do that. I don’t need it.” She tried to back away, knowing all the while what a useless gesture it would be.

The nurse shook her head. “I have more work to do. Painful work. You must be sedated.”

“You didn’t seem to care much for sedating me when he did his dirty work the first time, did you? Or were you not here for that part?”

The woman frowned severely at that and ripped the cap off the needle.

Something snapped inside Nina. Maybe it was the food giving her strength, or maybe she’d finally had enough of being jerked around both literally and figuratively, but she was furious.

“I don’t want to be sedated, you stupid bitch! I want you to tell me what that freak did to me. I want to out of here now!”

The woman clapped a hand over Nina’s mouth and held up the needle with her other hand. “Shut your mouth.” Then she leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Do you really want to rouse his attention?”

No, God no. Not him. She took a deep breath and shook her head. The woman removed her hand and bent down again. She came up with a large black bag, which she set on the foot of the bed.

“Listen, I’m just scared. You understand that, don’t you?”

Sorting through the bag, not looking up. “Of course.”

“Is he going to hurt me again?” Nina’s lower lip trembled and there was no use holding back the tears. She felt so pathetic. More powerless than she’d ever felt in her failure of a life.

The nurse continued pulling things out of the bag that Nina couldn’t see in the bad light. “Only you can decide that,” she said. “He would rather not repeat the procedure if he doesn’t have to.”

Procedure? Is she fucking kidding? Janie Quick, in her “I’m about to get medieval on these sons of bitches” voice, usually reserved for some hapless store clerk or restaurant server who wasn’t operating to her standards. It was a voice that would make little Nina want to curl up into a ball and disappear, but now she embraced it. She needed it.

“The rape, you mean. The one where he . . . he raped me with a fucking spiked club and ruh-ruined me down there.” Her voice and body shook with barely contained fury, but she kept the volume down.

The woman kept her head bowed, eyes averted. Shamed, or so Nina hoped. “You are not ruined,” she murmured. “It isn’t as bad as you think.”

She grunted and swallowed back her tears. “That’s not saying much, you know. Maybe I won’t have to piss through a tube for the rest of my life, but as far as being readily identifiable as a woman down there, I highly doubt it. Am I right? I mean unless hamburger is now a gender.”

Maybe it’s all for the best, her mother’s voice intoned. The way you’ve been treating it over the last few years, it probably doesn’t look much different. Cubed steak versus hamburger. “Shut up, bitch,” she muttered.

The woman looked at her. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing. What’s your name?”

She hesitated. “Kali.”

“Okay, Kali, maybe you can patch things up down there, but what next? Why are you helping him? You saw what he did to me. He’s done it to dozens of other girls. I saw them. One girl I know committed suicide, and I’m sure she’s not the only one. So why are you here doing this? Is he holding you prisoner, too?”

She paused what she was doing, but still made no eye contact. No answer.

Nina sighed. “Well can you at least open the goddamn curtains? I need sunlight. Something. This place is like a cave.”

Kali whirled around in an eddy of red cloth, her eyes burning within her face. “No! Stop asking me things. Stop talking to me. I never should have left you awake.” Pulling out the needle again, she pushed it into the port of Nina’s IV tube and pressed the plunger. Her veins flooded with whatever tranquilizer lurked inside. Soon she’d be out again, and this woman and Junior and whoever else he had stashed in his hell house would be able to do whatever they wanted with her.

“Listen, I just want to go home. Don’t you get that? I just want to go home.”

“You are home.” The woman’s grin was cold, and it never touched her eyes. Just like the Madam, just like Janie Quick.

As Kali left, Nina wanted to call after her, to beg her not to leave her alone in here, to have an ounce of fucking humanity for crying out loud, but the drug was already taking effect. Her eyelids felt weighted, and the world’s light narrowed to a pinpoint. Before she ventured off to oblivion, her mind called up the image of something she thought she’d seen when Kali was doing the injection.

Her wrist had a scar around it, like a bracelet. Nina’s mind drifted to human puppets and then into the welcoming darkness.

***

She awoke, stiff-necked and groggy. However long she’d been out this time, she couldn’t say for sure, but there was another plate of food sitting beside the bed. The maddening buzz of the bug light hanging from the bedpost was the only sound. No heavy breathing or creaking ropes from overhead. At least for now, the web remained devoid of its human spider. Nina wondered why he hadn’t been back. Of course, she couldn’t say for sure one way or another. He probably had most of his fun when she was unconscious.

After gobbling down the bologna sandwich and chugging down the milk, she threw the blankets back. She was in a new gown, this one pale blue with purple flowers. The thought of being manipulated and put through clothing changes while unconscious was almost more unsettling than everything else that had happened to her since she stepped through the doors of this place. Either way, it was time to get the hell out of here.

She didn’t have much of a plan, other than to move as fast as she could. It wouldn’t be far. She was pretty sure she was still on the first floor, in the same room where it had all begun, and she had a good idea in which direction the front door lay. Just run down the hall and dart to the left through the dining room and into the foyer and out the door. Once she was out, she thought she’d have enough adrenaline to make her fly.

Her mother was quick to answer. Run. That’s hilarious. Yes, by all means, run. You can’t even move your legs without thinking you’re gonna to die. Besides, who’s to say all your plumbing won’t fall out as soon as you stand up?

She winced. That was impossible. Wasn’t it?

You wanna find out?

Nina closed her eyes, squeezing her temples with the heels of her hands, as if that would quiet the voices in her head. She would not let them talk her out of this. Lying here in this bed and waiting for whatever horrors Junior had in store for her was not an option.

But she had to admit if he caught her, he would probably kill her.

Torture is more like it. If he wanted to kill you, honey, he would have by now.

God, just shut up!

All right, so what would happen when (not if) she got away? Who exactly did she have to call? The cops? Not a chance. There were so many cops on the Cassini payroll the Madam would probably be on her way to collect her within the hour. She thought maybe she could flag someone down on the road, someone who was driving out of the state who could get her far enough away from this place that she would be out of the Cassini family’s reach.

That’s another great idea, sweetheart. Escape one sadistic rapist and fall prey to another!

Or maybe she would get lost in the woods and die out there instead. Her bitch mother had no snappy retort for that one. Probably because it was the one option all parties could agree on. Survival wasn’t her priority at this point. She just didn’t want to die in this stinking place, in this stinking bed, her mind turning slowly to scrambled egg with the help of heavy narcotics. Let some hunter stumble across her bones one day. The image of lying down beneath a tree and opening her veins with a sharp rock was so strong, she almost smelled the dry leaves beneath her soaking up the blood.

When that’s the best solution you can come up with, honey, you know you’re better off dead.

She searched for something she could use as a weapon of sorts, just in case he or Kali did come after her. Nina didn’t like the idea of killing the nurse. In fact, she had a feeling the woman was as much a prisoner as Nina herself, but Nina wasn’t cut out to be someone else’s hero. She probably wouldn’t even be able to save herself. Besides, the woman probably had a raging case of Stockholm Syndrome. She was now as much the enemy as the freak.

There didn’t appear to be a sharp object anywhere in the room. She studied the tray. Paper plate, paper milk carton. No fork, and certainly no knife. Then she remembered a story Joey once told her about a stretch he did in prison, and how his cellmate had broken off a piece of a lunch tray to use as a shank.

She moved all the stuff off the tray and picked it up. It was the wooden kind with folding legs. If it had been a solid piece, she would have been out of luck, but this . . . this would work. She was weaker than she’d ever been in her life, but the tray was old like everything else in this house, and after some wiggling, one of the legs snapped off right where it met the table. Looking at it, she wondered if she could hurt anyone with it. The broken end was jagged enough to maybe scrape someone up a little. The tapered end might fit nicely in an eye socket, provided she would be able to aim straight at an assailant, but overall it was a shitty weapon. It was the best she could do.

She placed it between her teeth as she moved, biting down when the pain struck, letting the cheap wood absorb her pain. Finally, she was sitting up on the edge of the bed, at least as well as she could. She had to lean to the side to keep from putting weight on her wounds, and she realized why a lot of pregnant women sat on those inflatable donut seats after they gave birth. Then something brushed her legs and she nearly screamed, until she looked down and saw a run of plastic tubing. She was still wearing the damn catheter!

She bent down and sure enough found the bag hanging from a hook attached to the bed frame. It was half full of urine. Why wasn’t she wearing a diaper? She wondered when she last took a shit, but she had enough experience with narcotics to know they caused major constipation. So did trauma. She grabbed the bag and, after a moment of indecision, draped it over her arm like a strange purse. After taking some deep breaths and wiping beads of sweat off her brow, Nina grabbed onto the bedpost and pulled herself up to her feet.

A wave of daggers traveled up her body, and she almost fell back to the bed, but she held tight, gagging, trying not to faint.

Oh put your big girl panties on! You’d think you never felt pain before!

The common refrain her mother would use when she ripped the knots out of crying little Nina’s hair after a bath. More words she hated that she now embraced. In the great unlikelihood she ever saw her mother again, she supposed she would have to thank the miserable old bitch.

She edged her right foot forward on the worn wood floor. Then the next. By the time she’d made it halfway to the bedroom door in her odd waddle-shuffle, she was trembling, the film of sweat on her body making her feel feverish. She had bitten down hard enough on the wooden tray leg to leave deep imprints with her canines.

Just a little farther and she would be able to reach the knob, and maybe lean against the door for a minute to rest. And listen for your sadistic captor, don’t forget about that. She knew she wasn’t really thinking straight enough to do this right. Gonna get yourself caught lickety-split. And what do you think he’ll do to you then, girly?

She remembered something Kali said about him not wanting to “repeat the procedure.” But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t if he was angry enough with her. He might just kill her in a rage, even if he didn’t mean to. In her line of work, she’d seen a lot of men like that. They were the ones who paid a little extra to slap her around a bit. Maybe even choke her. The Willow girls weren’t required to perform such acts if they didn’t want to, but Nina always did, and so did most of the others. Every little bit toward their balances was worth some humiliation, a sore throat, a black eye, a risk of a violent sex fantasy taken one step too far.

So he would probably take her to the brink of what she could tolerate if he was angry enough. Maybe even beyond that brink to the point of catatonic madness. And maybe that was okay with her. No, she didn’t want to die here—she had a feeling her spirit would be stuck in this dreadful place if she did—but it had to be better than living here until she actually wanted to stay and possibly do Junior’s bidding with some other girl, like Kali.

When she reached the door, she leaned against it, trying desperately to slow her breathing and keep it quiet. Her gown was sticking to her back and chest like a second skin. Pressing her ear against the door, she listened for any kind of movement on the other side. It was difficult to hear anything other than her grating breath and trebling heart. The wood was thick, solid. Not the cheap hollow cores she’d grown up with. She couldn’t stand there forever. At some point, one of them would come to check on her. She reached down and turned the knob. It was unlocked. Jesus, they really were giving her a long leash, weren’t they?

Leash? More like a trap.

Nina was done listening to the unflappable Janie Quick for now. Fuck off, Mother.

She inched the door open and peered out to see a hallway lit by rays of murky sunlight. Suddenly everything felt a little more possible and a little less excruciating. But she had to move fast, no matter how much it hurt or how scared she was.

Just go!

Ignoring her pain as best she could, she limped down the hall in a waddling tiptoeing jog, the bag of her piss sloshing with every step. She remembered some of the things she’d seen the night she first arrived. The scratched out pictures, the skeletons of dead animals nailed to the walls. In better light, she briefly noted how filthy and deteriorated everything looked. Dirt ground into the cracked plaster, insect and rat droppings, graffiti, cobwebs. She was halfway to the dining room. Once there she would be as good as gone, but she had to pick it up.

Easier said than done. Her lungs were burning and she felt a strange bulging between her legs, like something the size of a basketball trying to fall out of her. Swelling. Had to be. Or maybe it was the catheter tube working its way loose. I can’t deal with this right now. Have to stay on target. Almost there, almost there . . .

Then the scream came—the inevitable, indignant, inhuman screech of her captor, followed by the familiar sound of wheels rolling along the floor behind her. Nina chanced a look over her shoulder and saw the butler corpse with its black diamond eyes bearing down quickly.

She lurched farther ahead, turning her awkward waddle into an awkward sprint. Her nightgown snagged on something jutting from the wall a few feet from the dining room’s elaborately carved doorway, maybe a nail, maybe a claw or a tooth belonging to the passive monster that was this horrible house. She yanked, but the cheap cotton remained stubborn. Of course it did.

“Come on, come on!” she screamed through gritted teeth, tugging every which way. The cart was gaining, and she could hear Junior laughing up above, like he was enjoying this. Motherfucker.

Finally, she heard a low rip as the cloth pulled free, and she rounded the corner into the dining room, not more than a second or two before she heard the sound of the butler’s cart colliding with the wall and apparently getting stuck there given the puppeteer’s frustrated blat. Nina stumbled through the cluttered dining room, knocking over chairs, tripping over debris, sobbing harder as she closed the distance to the other doorway, where the sunlit foyer and her eventual freedom lay. So close so close!

Three more steps and she reached out her hands.

Please God please God please!

As her fingertips brushed the tarnished brass knob, she felt the rope slip around her neck, and as she was lifted from the floor, she kept pumping her legs, running in mid-air as the freak’s furious and triumphant howls filled her world.

Chapter 8

Ramón’s Bond

He waited outside the little brick house in his newly purchased 1987 Buick Riviera. It was his first real buy with the cash, and it only cost him a couple grand plus a little extra to convince the seller to wait a few weeks on transferring the title. He signed the bill of sale with an alias he pulled out of his ass: Hermann Sanchez.

The ride was far from ideal, and a long shot from the Madam’s Lincoln, but that was okay because it was the first thing he’d owned all to himself in years. The suspension was gone, the belts squealed, and it smelled like old cigarettes and dog piss, but it was serviceable enough to get him down south, at which point he would abandon it in some empty parking lot near the Mexican border in exchange for something else. A convertible maybe, if he could manage it.

He would have preferred to be gone by now, but he found one of the first rules of running was not to run. When first exposed, get into a hole and stay there until you and the shit around you can settle a bit. They wouldn’t expect him to still be here, so that was going to work in his favor while he took care of some business. For about a week, he just laid low in a motel in Hoboken while he thought everything through and then slept like a caterpillar entering a cocoon. Metamorphosis required a conservation of energy. Acting while still in a blind panic would have gotten him caught and killed that night. He didn’t know if the Madam was dead or alive, and he regretted not making sure before leaving her on the side of the highway, but he’d been scared to death. His killer instinct wasn’t what it used to be, but he would get better. He needed to, if he hoped to stay alive through this. Regardless of whether the bruja was breathing, he was now a seal swimming among sharks.

Finding people who still existed in his old gambling network was about as difficult as he expected it would be. Most of them were dead; folks in that line of work didn’t exactly have long shelf lives. As for the ones not confirmed dead, it was an even split prison or vanishing off the map entirely. If Ramón had to guess whether the missing had gone into witness protection or taken a concrete bath, his keen betting instincts would have gone with the latter. Running some of his names through the low level dealers and runners in Jersey was a little like filtering coffee through a dirty sock. None of it came out worth a shit. He did hear one name more than a few times, though: Jonny Spank. If he needed anything, he had to talk to Jonny Spank. “Jonny Spank’s the man to see, bro,” said one crank dealer with a harelip and the stupid name of Pitts Perez. “He runs a place out in Hoboken. Set you right up.”

Ramón didn’t know any Jonny Spank, but he knew a man named Giovanni Spano or “Jonny” to his friends, or “Jonny Spank” to people who gave a shit about ridiculous nicknames. Jonny used to be a runner in Ramón’s old bookie operation back in the Red Hook days, but Ramón soon learned Jonny had gone into business for himself taking bets and peddling illicit substances, using a pawn shop as his front. Original.

Jonny knew some guys who knew some guys, which was how these things usually worked. After Ramón showed the cagey bastard a few stacks of bills, Jonny made some phone calls and told Ramón to lay low for a few more days while his guys put together the necessary documentation to get him out of the country. For an extra chunk of cash, Jonny was also going to arrange protection for some important people here.

That should have been enough for him to leave this place behind for good, but here he sat in his Riviera, a mere forty miles from where he’d left the Madam for dead, wasting time and risking his neck all so he could watch his son and granddaughter walk to the bus stop together. Ramón thought of how his mother pushed him into marrying Maria and making something good out of his life before it was too late. Juanita Gutierrez saw the people her son was running with and knew where it was headed. She’d buried Ramón’s father ten years previous, after the cops pulled him out of the river with a bullet in the head and his fingertips missing, the standard calling card of a man who made the wrong kind of friends. Maria was the daughter of one of his mother’s church friends, a quiet and sweet Catholic girl with a plain face. She wasn’t ugly, but she was a far cry from the women he ended up visiting on a regular basis behind her back, the sort with amazing bodies and no hang-ups when it came to using them.

Maria wanted no part of that life. She had come from a good working class family. Her father was a retired cop, her mother a schoolteacher. They wouldn’t accept a street hood for a son-in-law, and Ramón supposed he’d come to love Maria enough to attempt a legit life with her, and for a while it seemed like everything would work out. He got a real job doing roadwork and patching roofs. She worked part time in an accounting office. They got a small place in Brooklyn and settled into a routine of ordinary but frequent sex and good home cooking. Then Maria got pregnant and had to quit her job, and there was never enough money. The harder things got at home, the louder the siren song of his old life became, and eventually it lured him back. As they say in the storybooks, things were never the same after that.

He’d known for a few years where Alejandro was living, but he never had the stones to go and see him. Didn’t really have them now, either. He considered writing a letter letting him know some people might come around asking about his old man, and people were looking out for him, but it probably would have inspired even more contempt in the boy. Ramón didn’t know his son as an adult, but if he was anything like his father, he would have preferred hearing these things in person. There was more honor in it. At least that’s what he told himself.

Of course, there wasn’t much honor in sitting out here like some eighties movie cop watching his son come and go like a suspect in a drug ring. It was unlikely Alejandro would even let him into the house. Would probably slam the door right in his face as soon as he recognized who was knocking. But Ramón couldn’t leave with a clear head and heart until he spoke with his son, man to man.

Alejandro gave the school bus one last wave before heading back inside his little brick house. Ramón took the final swig of his cold coffee and got out of the car. He zipped his windbreaker against the autumn morning chill, taking a few deep breaths before crossing the street. He walked up the short path that cut through the postage stamp lawn and climbed a porch with just enough room for the little lighthouse statue sitting on it. Lighthouses were a symbol of welcome, of shelter. Ironic, given the visitor.

He rang the doorbell, feeling himself shrink in his clothes, twisting his hat in his sweaty hands as footsteps approached from inside. It wasn’t much different from how he felt standing on the Ballas porch a few days ago, only now he was actually more nervous.

You shouldn’t have come here, old man.

Too late to back down now.

The door opened, and Ramón stood face to face with his grown son for the first time in fifteen years. Back then, he’d been an angry boy, molded into a man far too soon. That’s what happens when a kid buries his mother before he’s old enough to grow a mustache. Now Alejandro was taller than him, with a full goatee. He was a good looking boy who only had a hint of his father’s looks in the shape of his eyes, and the hardness creeping into them as recognition filtered in.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. At least he didn’t slam the door shut without a word. Ramón had been expecting it.

“Hello, son.”

Ramón looked at the clenched jaw, the tightened fists, and knew Alejandro was no less angry now than he was on that night fifteen years ago when the paramedics took Maria away in a body bag. The boy had every right to his anger, then and now.

“May I come in?” Ramón asked.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He’d been anticipating that, but he couldn’t let it end there. Grab your cajones, old man.

“Look, it won’t take long. After I leave, you won’t ever have to see me again.”

Alejandro watched him for a minute, trying to read him. After a big sigh, he opened the door the rest of the way and stood aside to let him in.

The place was definitely small, but bigger than it looked on the outside. Bright and airy. Cheerful. Pictures of the family hung from the yellow walls, his granddaughter at various stages of life—from bald infant to snaggle-toothed grade-schooler. The little girl’s mother was a slightly more heavyset version of Maria. A happy and smiling family. Ramón once had similar pictures of his own family, but looks were often deceiving.

“Nice place,” he said.

“How did you find it?”

“I know a guy.”

“Ah.”

A long and distended pause followed, the two men standing with their arms folded, looking everywhere but at each other. Ramón decided it was he who should break the silence. “I’m out. Out of the life. For good.”

“Is that right?”

“Yep. I got square with my debts and I’m a free man now.”

“Uh-huh.” Alejandro walked into the kitchen, where he poured himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t offer Ramón any.

“I’m heading out of town now. Actually, I’m heading out of the country. I wanted to come by and see you before I left.”

“Okay. You’re seeing me. Is that it?”

This was going nowhere, just as he’d anticipated. Nevertheless, his impatience stirred. The boy didn’t have to be so cold. It was disrespectful.

You didn’t have to come here, old man. You know he hates you. You did it to yourself.

“Listen, son . . . I was hoping—”

“Is my family in danger with you being here?”

There it was. The pebble in the shoe. Ramón supposed he should have felt proud of how quick his boy was, but right now he just felt small. He looked back down at his shoes, because it was easier than looking him in the eyes. Coward. “I would never want to put you in danger.”

Alejandro put down the coffee cup and took a deep breath. “That doesn’t answer my question, but then again I guess it does.” His terrible calm was more disheartening than any angry outburst would have been. It meant he’d long accepted his old man was a piece of shit.

He looked at a picture of the little girl stuck to the fridge with alphabet magnets. She was on a swing set, pink dress, black pigtails flying. He could almost hear her laughter and realized it had been years since he’d heard the sound of ringing innocence. “What’s her name?”

“Who?”

“You know who. My granddaughter.”

Alejandro’s jaw tightened. “Ella. Her name is Ella.”

“I’m sorry. About all this. Look, you asked if you needed to worry, and no. You don’t.” He pulled out Jonny Spank’s pawn shop business card and set it on the counter. “But if anyone comes around asking about me and you feel unsafe, call this number.”

Alejandro picked up the card, looked at it, and pocketed it. “Who would come by? What sort of trouble are you in?”

“Can’t think of a time in my life when I wasn’t in some sort of trouble, son. Your mother, she knew all about that.”

“Yeah, and she paid the biggest price for it. We both did. You weren’t there when I found her. You were out. Probably in a basement somewhere trying to win back the rent and grocery money you lost. Too drunk to know when to bluff and when to fold and come home to your family.”

Ramón swallowed a lump in the back of this throat. The night Maria died, he’d been in the storeroom of Gemini Hardware, where a guy named Tommy Bean ran a regular Let it Ride game. He left three grand in the hole and came home to find Maria brandishing an eviction notice in his face. The landlord had finally had enough late rent. She was so angry, and it only made him even more so. He was drunk and had a headache and his debts were reaching dangerous proportions. The last thing he needed to hear was her high-pitched harping.

“You want closure? I’ll give it to you. Anything you want to know, anything you want me to say, I’m here.” Even now, you’re lying, old man. You really think you came here to tell him the truth?

Alejandro grunted. “Closure? You’re a stranger to me. I got nothing to close on. I just take care of my family instead of gambling their lives away. It’s easier than I thought it would be. I mean, the way you handled it, I was sure it would be the hardest thing in the world, having a wife and raising a kid. For years I avoided it because of that, but Kate turned me around. I figured out it’s not so much work being a good man after all. You just weren’t up for the task. Or maybe you gotta be born a certain way.”

Of course, it was more than that. There were a plethora of reasons why he abandoned his post as a father and husband, why he started visiting those backroom card tables again, why he eventually started running his own ragtag betting operation, running up enough debt that he eventually became Victor Cassini’s bitch. They were reasons that only made sense inside his head, though. They would sound hollow and silly spoken aloud to someone who spent more than half his life hating him, who had turned his father into the best representation of who not to be. But nothing Alejandro said was wrong, either. Ramón hadn’t been up to the task of family man. That had been Madre’s wish, not his. He had another calling, one he was still trying to answer after so many mistakes and diversions from the path.

This would be his last pit stop.

“You’re right,” Ramón said. “What more can I say?”

He could feel Alejandro’s eyes drilling into him, daring him to say more or perhaps break down crying and beg for his forgiveness, but Ramón would never go there. Couldn’t after everything he’d seen and done. He would not only have to cry for his dead wife and alienated son, but for every girl he’d sent into the Ballas house. He’d have to weep for all the people he’d hurt and killed before then, and for all the times he’d looked the other way when someone else did the dirty work. There weren’t enough tears or contrition in the world for all that. There was only the road, the ocean, and its hunger for bad memories.

Alejandro looked away. “That’s okay. I don’t need you to say any more than that. Really, I just want you out of here. Every second I have to look at you is another second I have to relive seeing my mother’s dead face when I opened that closet door, or when I had to read the note she left me begging me to forgive her. But fuck you both. She could have taken me and left. I begged her, but she refused. I used to think it was her Catholic bullshit, or because she was scared, but eventually I figured out it was because she didn’t want to leave your money, at least when it came in. Because when you hit, you really hit and she was just as hooked on that as you. That closet she hung herself in, with all its pretty dresses and expensive shoes she bought with your dirty money . . .”

“Son, please.”

“Both of you were selfish and greedy assholes, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe you think there’s more of her in me than you because I ain’t a thug like you. Well, I can promise you that isn’t the case. Maybe you broke her down. Maybe drove her half nuts. Hell, maybe you actually killed her yourself and covered it up. Either way, she was weak. As far as I’m concerned, I’m better off without either of you in my life.”

Ramón’s heart felt like lead. Any inkling of hope that the intervening years had somehow softened his son was snuffed under the weight of the boy’s savage acceptance of his parents’ failures.

He put his hat back on with hands that felt numb. “Like I said, if you have any trouble, that card I gave you—”

“Tell you what, if I have any trouble, I’ll call the cops. That’s what normal people do when bad guys come around messing in normal people’s lives.”

“Son, if you’re half as smart as I think, you ought to know better than that. The cops are bought and paid for. They won’t be your friends. Not with this.” He suddenly felt like he was talking an emotionally distraught person off the ledge of a building. “If you want to keep your family safe, keep that number handy.”

“I know how to keep my family safe. Now get out.” He pointed toward the door. “Go.”

Ramón wanted to press the importance of Jonny Spank’s business card further, but by the set of Alejandro’s jaw, he could tell it was pointless. Spank’s boys would keep an eye out whether Alejandro wanted them to or not. He was almost out the door when Alejandro called out, “I hope it was worth it.”

Ramón turned around. “What?”

“Whatever it is you did to piss them off and put whatever is left of your family in danger.”

“It’s never worth it, son. That was never the point.”

***

He sat behind the wheel of the Riviera, trembling. For the next few minutes, the adrenaline from the encounter, no longer repressed, raced through his body, making him feel like he was either going to throw up or crawl out of his skin like a junkie in withdrawal. Then his throwaway phone, which he’d left on the passenger seat, rang. Only one person had the number. He picked it up.

“Jonny?”

“I’m out, man. We don’t know each other.”

Ramón’s stomach clenched. “Say what?”

“Look, I know you got troubles and everything, but you didn’t tell me they was troubles with a capital C. I just had one of my boys come in here with a busted face after one of Cassini’s musclemen knocked him around a little, asking questions about you. I can’t get involved in that. I’m a businessman and I hate those fuckin’ mooks, but I ain’t no martyr.”

Ramón pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. A headache was coming on. A well-earned headache. “What did he tell them?”

“He didn’t tell them shit, ’cause he don’t know shit. But I can’t promise I won’t when they come in here next. You paid me good money, but you didn’t pay me enough to go up against these guys. They own everybody.”

“Tell me somebody they don’t own. Someone who can still help me.”

“Shit man, I don’t know!” There was a crash in the background and Jonny let out a stern “goddamn motherfuck” under his breath.

“You do know. Don’t jerk me around. I paid you, now give me something I can fucking use, man.”

Jonny let out a big sigh. “All right, all right. Fuck. There’s a new up and comer in Atlantic City. Some Jew named Benny Rosen. He’s a crazy fucker. Real thorn in Vic Cassini’s side right now, from the way I hear it. He’s been buying up all the properties that flopped after the market crash, and word has it he’s trying to start his own little empire down there. Owns a casino called the Blue Diamond. He’ll probably be fish food before too long, but he has balls.”

“AC? There’s nothing but a bunch of small time pimps and loan sharks down there. You sure about this?”

“Like I told you, he’s nuts. And definitely not OG. Nobody here wants to waste much time with the clam diggers these days, but Rosen’s dad was a Congressman back in the eighties, and he’s got some old money to play with. Word has it he walked into a Commission meeting and threw a million bucks on the table. Basically bought himself a seat.”

Ramón couldn’t believe he’d never heard of this guy before. “You know him? Ever met him?”

“Yeah, I met him once. Don’t know what’s so special about him. If you ask me, he’s just a little nerd who watched Scarface one too many times as a kid, but he ain’t stupid neither. He’s probably your best bet if you want to see somebody who ain’t afraid to deal behind Cassini’s back. I bet he could get you out of the country and he’d do it for free just to spite Vic. Crazy fuck.”

Hanging out any longer on the east coast sounded like a recipe for disaster, but he didn’t have much choice at the moment. He had to go where the connections were. “All right. Thanks, Jonny.”

“No problem. Look . . . I’ll throw them off your scent at least. Tell them you was already heading out El Paso way.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“And don’t worry about your kid. I’ll keep some eyes on the situation there just because I ain’t a fuckin’ prick. Now burn your phone after you hang up. That’s what I’ll be doing. We never talked”

“You got it.”

Ramón stared at the cheap little flip phone for a minute before breaking it apart and tossing it out the window. Then he started the Buick and pointed it in the direction of Atlantic City.  He didn’t look at the little brick house as he passed it.

Chapter 9

Madam Makes an Ally

The driver pulled up in front of the Blue Diamond Hotel and Casino, and the Madam looked down to see her white-knuckled hands gripping her purse like it was going to fly away. She’d stowed another pistol away in it and didn’t intend on leaving anything to chance. It was the first time she’d been in a car since her ordeal, and she supposed she was still a little nervous. The driver wasn’t affiliated with her family. He was one of Benny Rosen’s men. On the phone last night, when she told him her driver was no longer on the payroll and she wasn’t able to drive herself due to her injuries, he insisted on sending someone.

Don’t you worry about a thing. Clayton is a good man. She’d have to see about that. One of her most trusted people had just ruined her, so she wasn’t willing to put much faith in any hired hands at the moment.

Clayton, a quiet spoken black man who looked to be in his thirties, got out of the car and opened her door. She stepped out, handing him a folded fifty-dollar bill. “I shouldn’t be more than an hour. Be down here waiting when I step out of those doors, and there will be another fifty in it for you.”

“Yes, Madam. Don’t you worry. Mr. Rosen told me you were my most important client.”

“Smart man. You can go now.” She waved him off.

“Yes, Madam.” He gave her a little bow and walked back to the car, his spine as straight as a yardstick. Maybe he was okay, after all. If everything worked out as she hoped, she might have to hire him from under Rosen’s likely large nose.

She took a deep breath of the sea air mixed with the Jersey pollution and grimaced. Still an armpit, this place. Four blocks of artificial fantasy land surrounded by an eternity of ghetto and petty crime. Even the fantasyland wasn’t much of a fantasy, unless being surrounded by hot dog vendors, idiot tourists, and drug addicts was your sort of gravy. Aside from some minor loaning operations a few blocks from the resorts, the Cassinis didn’t have much business here. Dante made some investments years ago, but they never took off.

“AC is a lot like a woman’s purse,” he’d once told her during one of their many chess games in the boathouse. “Anything you put into it falls to the bottom, never to be found again.”

But Benny Rosen was trying to change that way of thinking, buying up a lot of the smaller and struggling hotels and restaurants. Most people thought it was a fool move, like acquiring all the purple properties on a Monopoly board, but the Madam knew that was just smoke and mirrors. Most people didn’t know Rosen’s real bread and butter: online banking and stock market scams, international real estate, Chinese casinos. No construction, waste management, and drug dealing crap that kept the Cassinis on the fast track to eventual irrelevance. Rosen knew where the real riches lay. He was a true visionary.

Victor wasn’t a fan of the man, though. “Let him have that clam digger fuckhole down there if it makes him feel important,” he’d said the first and the last time they’d spoken about their new friend to the south, about six months ago. “We’ll keep looking in on him, making sure he stays put and pays his regular respects. If he doesn’t, I got no problem reminding him who we are and how we play ball.” She wasn’t privy to the details, but she thought her brother was nervous. He rarely wasted words on people he thought were inconsequential. Her intuition told her Victor tried to make some sort of deal with Rosen, but Rosen had turned him down.

After that, the Madam saw her opportunity. She contacted Rosen and told him she was very interested in what he was trying to accomplish in Atlantic City, and she was prepared to make a very large investment to ensure Victor was eventually pushed out of the picture. Rosen perked up at that point, and they regularly kept in contact over the last few months. Mostly it was small talk, which was cheap. She was waiting to bulk up her purse a little more so when she made her move, no one would doubt she was serious. But the game had changed. Her purse was now gone, and she didn’t have anyone else she could confide in who wasn’t in Victor’s pocket. She needed her secret ally more than ever. She just hoped he would be there now that she was completely powerless.

The Madam stepped into the Blue Diamond casino and gasped. Chrome, glass, and blue neon glinted and gleamed on nearly every surface. Representations of the namesake were everywhere, from the patterns of the floor tiles to the wall sconces to the elaborate light fixtures overhead. The place looked like some kind of set for a futuristic science fiction movie, though not too far ahead was the gambling pit, where the green felt tables, dinging of slot machines, and the smell of stale cigarette smoke reminded her how the gleam of the future was nothing more than a mirage. Rosen told her to go to the hotel desk and let one of the clerks know she had arrived. The Madam hoped they would know who she was, her new eye patch and hat, with a few layers of veil, concealing half her face.

They were all young women, all blonde, all in deep blue jackets with red ascots around their necks. Practically clones. That couldn’t have been a coincidence. Rosen clearly had hiring preferences, and none of them looked like one-eyed middle-aged gunshot victims. Swallowing back her rising bile, she walked up to the counter and spoke to the nearest girl. “My name is Cassini. I am here to see Mr. Rosen.”

Blondie flashed a wide, pearlescent smile. No broken teeth. “Certainly, Madam. We’ve been expecting you. I will escort you to Mr. Rosen’s private lounge.”

She walked to the end of the long counter and led the Madam down a short hallway to a dim room the cosmetic opposite of the cold and sterile lobby. Dark wood, overstuffed leather couches, and humidors dominated the space. A small bar stood at the end of the room, as well as a flat screen television big enough for the Madam to step through without having to duck. It was a man’s paradise. “Feel free to pour yourself a drink, Madam. Mr. Rosen will be right down.”

After the girl was gone, the Madam walked to the end of the bar and poured herself a neat glass of single malt scotch. The sip rolled down to her belly, settling in like a cat on a fireplace hearth. She took her drink to one of the couches and sat down, savoring the way the furniture cradled her sore body.

Oh what would Victor think if he knew she was here? She wondered if he’d sat in this very spot, trying so hard not to be impressed by Rosen’s grandeur as he made a pathetic attempt to woo the man into an archaic and likely insulting business deal. She’d gone to great lengths to ensure her brother wouldn’t know her whereabouts, but if he asked, she planned to tell him she wanted to have a little time to herself and had gone for a drive in order to see if she could still function with one eye. And that wouldn’t exactly be inaccurate.

After what happened this morning, she knew if she had to remain cooped up in that horrible house another minute, she might just go on a killing spree. Her celebration of making it out of the bedroom and down the stairs to her office had been short-lived. She opened the door and found one of Victor’s surrogates, a fatso prick named Sully Barone, in her office with his feet up on the desk, eating a jelly donut and flipping through her business files. She stabbed his hand with a letter opener and he fell down the stairs as he ran away screaming.

A few of the girls, who for some godforsaken reason weren’t working, stood there watching him beg for someone to call an ambulance because he couldn’t feel his legs, even though he was obviously moving them as he squirmed around like a pathetic infant. Most of the whores hadn’t seen the Madam since the shooting, and they goggled up at her. Thin to begin with, she’d lost a great deal of weight in the last week, and her gaunt face, riddled on one side with red and black pockmarks, looked especially savage with her new black eye patch. She would eventually be fitted with a prosthetic eye, but for now she rather liked the new look and the effect it had on the girls.

“Get your useless twats back to work!” she’d screamed at them, and they fled like frightened ghosts.

She drained her glass and set it down on the heavy wood coffee table, checking her watch in the process. It seemed like she’d been waiting far too long for someone who seemed so interested in meeting with her.

“I like a woman who can drink like me.”

The Madam turned her head and saw a short man with a receding crop of curly black hair and round glasses perched upon his stereotypically Jewish nose. He wore a decent suit, but it wasn’t tailored well and it made him look like he was playing dress-up with his father’s clothes. This was Benny Rosen? He looked about as intimidating as an accountant. A very young and inexperienced accountant. She felt like she was on a blind date that had gotten off to a somewhat unfortunate start, but she didn’t have any choice but to endure. Allies, she needed allies. She worked up a suitable smile to conceal her broken teeth.

“Mr. Rosen, I presume?”

“In the flesh.” He glided over and took her hand, which he kissed tenderly. The pasted on smile was starting to feel painfully false, so she decided to settle on her standard icy grin.

“It’s a pleasure,” she said.

“No need to conceal your surprise. Most people expect a Jewish Michael Corleone, but they wind up getting a weird mix of Rick Moranis and Howard Stern. I blame my father.” He went to the humidor, plucked out a thick cigar, deftly clipping off the end. His self-deprecating humor was a little disarming. Rosen didn’t look like much, but once he opened his mouth, he commanded her attention. She respected that.

“After everything I’ve been through, you are the last person in the world I’m disappointed in, Mr. Rosen. Believe me.”

He sat down beside her, crossing his short legs and leaning back as he filled the air around him with the sweet smoke of his cigar. Now that he was sitting, she could focus a little less on his height. His eyes were on her face fully, no judgment or disgust or pity. He was just seeing her as she was, prepared to help. Something about it excited her in a way her eyes couldn’t reconcile. She wasn’t ordinarily attracted to anyone, let alone diminutive men in ill-fitting suits—the kind of men who usually showed up on her doorstep looking for a little bit of discreet fun—but when Rosen looked at her that way . . .

“I want you to start from the beginning,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

The Madam, whose only experience with spilling guts usually involved a blade and someone’s actual guts, took a deep breath and started talking. She began with the Ballas house deals, the money she’d been socking away, and ended with the confrontation with Ramón after she figured out he’d stolen from her. While she told him about Victor discovering and taking her hidden fortune, she didn’t reveal what happened after. That would have been unbecoming, and she wanted him to keep looking at her the way he was right now. Very much.

Rosen listened with his full attention, offering sympathetic nods and hand squeezes. She sifted through her memories, trying to find a time anyone other than Dante had looked at her in such a way but coming up short. And even Dante regarded her as something unfortunate, something he chose to endure because he felt responsible in some way. But not Rosen. It was enough to make her want to break down crying, but she would just as soon tell of the incestuous rape than cry in front of someone else.

“My poor, beautiful Contessa. Your story breaks my heart.” He kissed her cheek, her heart swelling with gratitude. You’re pathetic, lady.

“I’m powerless at this point. All of my momentum, all of my plans have been ripped away. I’m afraid our arrangement will have to be put on hiatus until I can manage to secure more funds, and there is no telling how long that will be.”

“You said the bulk of your money came from this man Ballas, is that right?”

The Madam nodded. “Yes. A very odd man. A hermit. Some sort of sadist. He . . . Well, let’s just say that the girls who visit him don’t exactly come back fit for duty again.”

“Interesting. He must have a lot of liquid assets if he’s able to drop that much money on a single night’s fun. Have you considered encouraging him to become a silent partner of sorts?”

She figured he would ask this. “Ballas doesn’t work that way. He has a very archaic way of doing things. He refuses to be seen in person. Communicates only in writing. He doesn’t even have a phone. And I’m telling you, judging by the condition my girls are in when they leave his house, I doubt the man is even human.”

Rosen’s eyebrows rose. “You’re kidding. That bad?”

“Trust me when I say Ballas is better left off the table.” She didn’t even like talking about Ballas. It wasn’t just because of his brutal handiwork, either. She had nearly died on her way to dealing with him. As far as she was concerned, the man was bad luck for a lot of people. Maybe his money was too.

He got up and took her empty glass with him to refill. “Okay, Contessa. If you say so. It’s difficult to let go of all that capital, but if there is too much risk, then there is too much risk.”

“I’m glad you see it my way.”

Rosen brought her back another drink. This one was clear and sparkling, with a twist of lime. One sip told her it was a gin and tonic, her favorite drink. His instincts were impeccable, and so was the drink.

“Have you considered a more direct approach to your problem?”

“Such as?”

“Such as handling your brother the old fashioned way. He’s an old man. You could even make it look like natural causes. Do you know the state of his will?”

“All of the money and controlling stakes in the companies would go to his children.” Never mind that she herself was one of his children. She could use her own twisted lineage to fight for what was rightfully hers, but that would be grotesque. It would ruin her family’s reputation, not to mention her credibility, as marginal as it was. No one would ever work with her if that secret were to make the light of day, because they wouldn’t blame him. They would blame her, the living freak who never asked to be born.

We must never speak of such horrors outside this room. Dante’s words as the chess pieces danced.

“Understood,” Rosen said, as if he’d heard the inner run of her thoughts, or at least some of them. “In that case, I think we have no other option than to find a way to bring your brother into my operation. I have a lot in the works. International things. How do you think he’d feel about investing in Chinese casinos? My resort in Macau was only the beginning. This is the wave of the future.”

The Madam gaped. He couldn’t be serious. Bringing Victor in was the last thing she wanted. Victor would steamroll over everything and do whatever it took to assume control. Then she’d be right back where she started, with her brother more powerful than he’d ever been before. No. This was her time to shine. “Mr. Rosen, I strongly advise we don’t—”

He placed his index finger delicately on her lips, shushing her. There was something oddly arousing about it, and she felt her clit tingle. She shifted in her seat. What the hell was wrong with her? This part of her was dead. She was sure of it. “Calm down, beautiful Contessa. I have a plan. Do you trust me? Do you trust that I am thinking of our best interests?”

The Madam considered her credo, her vow never to trust a man as long as she lived. Had there ever been one who hadn’t scammed or hurt or disappointed her? Even Dante, her beloved chosen father, had let her down in the end when he’d let his monster of a son take over the family fortunes because, at the end of all the horrors (of which we must never speak), the man was a stubborn traditionalist like all the rest. It was the Italian curse. Better to pass the lineage off to a child raping monster of a son than to a more worthy female.

But Rosen was different. He wasn’t one of them. He was his own man with a new sort of vision. None of that Family bullshit standing in the way. He was like a shiny red Ferrari in a stable of Rolls Royces. “Let’s hear your plan,” she said. She would hear it and then she would decide. She could always say no. At worst she would just leave this place, leave it and everything and start over somewhere far away from here. It wouldn’t be impossible.

He leaned forward and kissed her. Passionate yet gentle. The Madam felt like a melting glacier, her old bulwarks crumbling. No one had ever made her feel that way with a single kiss, and she had been with some beautiful men in her day, the sort of men who could easily be mistaken for gods. And yet here she was, wet and quivering for a man who was nearly young enough to be her son. A short, skinny Jewish nerd. But a brilliant and calculating short, skinny Jewish nerd.

He stood up and extended his hand. “I think we need to go somewhere a little more private and discuss our plans. What do you say?”

The Madam took his hand without hesitation.

Chapter 10

Nina’s Passenger

Ever since Nina’s attempted prison break, the freak hadn’t been nearly as generous about leaving her unbound. In fact, unless it was for supervised meals or cleanings, or assists onto a bed pan to relieve her bowels (which miraculously sprang back to life a few days ago), or one of her regularly scheduled turnings—Nina guessed it was to prevent bedsores—she remained strapped to the bed with locking leather restraints, like a mental patient. Kali did all of the work, and she was at least gentle about it, but she refused to talk beyond occasionally telling Nina what day of the week it was. She kept track enough to roughly estimate the date. Four Mondays had passed and the daylight sometimes sneaking around the edges of the blinds also clued her in. It was approaching late October. She’d been here over a month and Halloween was approaching. It used to be her favorite holiday, but now she was living it and decided if she ever got past this, she would become more of a Christmas fan.

One day, while she was getting a sponge bath, she asked Kali, “Is it Halloween yet?”

The woman cleared her throat, and for a minute, Nina thought it would be another one of her non-answer answers. A cleared throat usually meant the answer was the one Nina least wanted to hear. Then, surprisingly, Kali spoke.

“Not yet. You will know when it comes.”

The words almost had an omen-like quality to them. “What do you mean?”

“It’s his favorite holiday. He likes to put on a bit of a show for it.”

The words hung in the air like frozen fog, chilling her bones. Of course, Halloween was his favorite holiday too. Why should she have expected any different? Now she had something new to dread, and the worst part was it could be as soon as today or a week from now. “What does he do, perform a human sacrifice to the puppet god? Does he give out body parts for trick-or-treat?”

Kali refused to say anything more on the subject.

Junior came in several times a day to just sit and watch her from his web in the corner of the room. She was grateful for the shadows concealing him from full view, though she could hear the rattle of his breathing. That couldn’t be healthy. Do you suppose he has asthma or emphysema? Maybe he’s dying. Oh what a blessing that would be. She eventually came to the conclusion he was at least human. A very deformed one. Likely the result of heavy incest or maybe some chemicals he’d been exposed to in the womb. Who could say for sure?  Nina could only imagine the torture Junior’s mother must have endured, if she’d even survived the birth of him. She imagined young Junior eating his way out of the womb with his sharpened teeth and felt a little sick. And what of his father? Had he been there for the raising of his hell spawn too? It had to have driven him completely mad. Nina was amazed Junior had lived beyond infancy with his defects. Aside from the Cyclops-like eye, which she was now pretty sure wasn’t makeup, and bulbous cranium, Nina also noticed he had six fingers and toes on each limb that, while stubby and not fully formed, probably helped him with all the climbing he did.

She knew he could speak, but he only seemed to do so through his puppets or when she was blindfolded from seeing him. He spoke in “their” voices, rather than his own. When it was just him watching her, the only sounds he seemed capable of making were grunts, screeches, and heavy breathing sounds.

As endless hours passed with him doing little more than watching her, Nina came to believe Junior was waiting for something to happen. Maybe he was just waiting for her to die so she could join his dead puppet show, but then again if he wanted her to die, why was he nursing her back to health? The obvious answer was he was waiting for her to get better so he could ruin her all over again. Start the torture machine back up, strap the spiked dildo back on Pop and let him take another spin.

She prayed for death before that could happen. Maybe a stroke or an aneurysm. An accidental painkiller overdose, a bad case of food poisoning or some kind of infection. Lord knows the place was filthy enough to give her some kind of disease or dysentery. There was no way she could even hoard her own stash of meds, not with Kali injecting them into her arm every night.

She had taken to speaking aloud as she lay strapped to the bed. There was little else she could do. There was no reading material, no television. Conversation was the only thing she had going for her in the entertainment category, and talking to Junior, Kali, or the corpse of Hank Ballas was better than giving more credence to the blabbering voices in her head. Especially her mother’s. She was tired of Janie Quick’s know-it-all retorts to her every passing thought. They had become so prevalent and demeaning, especially after Nina’s horribly failed escape attempt, that if the woman ever arrived here to escort her home to Des Moines, Nina would have to give the proposition some thought before going along.

This was the time of day she’d come to think of as the “post-lunch strap-nap.” Junior had crept in a few minutes ago to assume his usual position in his corner roost. Her belly was full of canned soup, the leather straps were fastened tightly across her body, and soon she would fall asleep and awake a few hours later to a dinner of cold mystery meat and gravy paired with plain rice or noodles and an overcooked vegetable out of a can. Jailhouse food cooked with a little less love and attention. She would have killed a baby for some of her mom’s fried chicken and mashed potatoes.

Gazing up at the network of ropes over her head, she began her daily conversation, which was little more than a loosely delivered autobiography amid other stray thoughts. “You know, my Uncle Richie used to be a prop guy for the community theater back in our old town. At least when he wasn’t putting time in at the local chicken farm. He’d probably be really impressed by all your rigs and things. Did you do all this yourself?”

No answer. There never were answers. Nina was okay with that. She was comfortable with the sound of her own voice, rough and weak as it was.

“Richie was a cool guy. He was the only one in my family who wasn’t a total asshole. Still a drunk, though. They all were. I think it’s a requirement of living there, at least if you have any kind of self-awareness and you realize the best your life is ever going to get is living in a beat up trailer and spending half your days up to your ankles in chicken shit and the other half throwing spotlights on a bunch of corn-husking high school drop-outs fumbling their way through a shoddy production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that maybe one out of ten people in the audience can sort of understand. When that’s your life, you either turn to the bottle, or run away before you fall in headfirst. That’s what I did.”

She grunted a laugh. “That’s funny. I mentioned Shakespeare in the middle of my own little soliloquy. Don’t be fooled by my fancy words, though. I put in a few semesters at the local community college before I bailed for the big city. I guess that makes me more educated than the rest of my family, but dumber just the same. I could be sitting in my mom’s trailer right now eating a fried chicken dinner and chasing it with a can of whatever swill was on special at the local quickie mart. That could have been my life if I’d just been a little more . . . dull.”

Her eyes welled up with tears, and she lay silent for a little while, weeping as the steady rattle of her captor’s breathing lulled her to sleep. She was right on the edge when a strange tickling on her feet jerked her away from oblivion. Her eyes flew open, and she saw Junior dangling upside down over the foot of the bed, his unnaturally long tongue darting out and licking between her toes.

She jerked in revulsion, but the restraints around her ankles prevented her from moving more than a fraction of an inch. He was licking her toes. Not only that, but his right arm was jerking in a rapid motion, and she realized he was also masturbating. She didn’t think she could have been more disgusted if she’d awakened to find a large centipede crawling out of her nose. He’d licked her face before, and that was bad enough. She squished her eyes closed and imagined Kali giving her a bed bath, cleaning her feet with the cool washcloth. That almost sufficed to convince her bordering-on-frantic mind until the sucking started.

And then her mind turned traitor. Horrible traitor. The kind of traitor that deserved immediate death before a firing squad. It felt kind of good.

No it doesn’t! That’s fucking sick!

But it does. Remember when Joey did it that one time and you came so hard you ripped a hole in the sheet with your fingernails?

“Shut up!” she screamed. “Get off me! Now! Get off!”

Sharp, piercing pain erupted in her big toe. Junior looked up at her and showed her his filed teeth, reminding her he was perfectly capable of biting off any number of digits from her body if the fancy struck him.

Or an ear, or perhaps a tit. Don’t forget that, girlie.

With that, the unflappable Janie Quick did her daughter the best possible favor. The traitorous bubble of arousal at the sickeningly sensual way the freak was caressing her toes with his tongue burst, and she embraced the remaining bitterness and disgust like an old friend who had been thinking of moving away, but decided at the last moment to stick around. A moment later, he made that all too familiar grunt Nina had heard hundreds of times in her previous line of work, and her saliva-slick toes were coated in warm fluid.

He climbed back up to the web and crept out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. Nina began to tremble, and the dam of tears burst, letting out a fresh hot torrent of sobs. She finally acknowledged her terror. Not at what the freak had done. What had just happened wasn’t too different from a typical Saturday night in her old life. No, she was afraid of the new and ghoulish part of herself that seemed to enjoy it.

***

Kali came in with the dinner tray several hours later, setting it down on the nightstand so she could undo the straps and help Nina sit up. A little while ago, she didn’t think she would be able to muster up much of an appetite, but something was different about the food this time. It actually smelled good. Really good. Garlic, tomatoes, beef.

With the tray arranged across her legs, she could hardly believe her eyes. Before her was a huge plate of spaghetti with three meatballs the size of a child’s fist, four thick slabs of crusty fresh bread with herbed butter, a bowl of salad with shaved parmesan cheese, olives, and croutons, and finally a monstrous wedge of New York style cheesecake with a red, gooey sauce that could have been strawberry or raspberry.

“What in the world . . .” she murmured.

“He’s feeling generous tonight,” Kali said. “I picked this up at a place in Little Italy. Many say it’s the best in New York.”

She couldn’t wait any longer. A thought passed through her mind that the food was poisoned, that Junior was giving her the dignity of a final meal before killing her and turning her into a marionette’s play thing. But all that was drowned in the explosion of ecstasy at her first bite. She plowed through the noodles, while using the bread to mop up the sauce, pausing only to cut her meatballs into chunks so she could stuff even more into her mouth.

Joey used to take her to some great Italian joints, but they all paled in comparison to this feast. It didn’t escape her that her current perspective on food was a little warped after weeks of cheap scraps, but it didn’t matter. She was now eating the best meal of her life. She wasn’t sure after all the pasta, meatballs, and bread she would have room for dessert. Her meals before this had been small, just enough to keep her from starving. Now her gut felt like it was going to burst. But she also knew if she didn’t eat it all now, Kali would take it away and it would never come back again.

So she dug into the cheesecake, and the dense creaminess coupled with the tart raspberry flavor of the sauce immediately dulled the fullness sensors in her brain. She powered through the slice and even scraped the plate of all available fruit puree before dropping the fork and pushing away the tray.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said, but it was a lovely feeling to be that full. She could feel her body using it already.

Kali plopped two tablets into a glass of water, which immediately began to fizz. “Drink this. It will help get rid of the bloat.”

Nina drank and a few seconds later, she let out an enormous burp and felt a little better. “Thanks.”

“You’ve made a mess.” Kali pointed to the front of Nina’s gown, which was speckled with marinara.

“Sorry.” She wasn’t, really.

After taking the tray and setting it aside, Kali went to the room’s dresser and pulled out another gown. It seemed there was an endless supply of them. “Why do you suppose he was in such a good mood? Is he trying to fatten me up for something?” Nina let Kali pull off the stained garment and helped her carefully thread the IV tubing and bag through the armhole. It had become a bit of a silent dance between the two of them lately.

“Why must you always ask questions? Why can’t you just accept his generosity and leave it at that?”

“Because he’s holding me prisoner here, and I have no idea what his plans for me are. Why hasn’t he killed me yet? Why is he letting me lie here day after day, like he’s just waiting for something to happen?”

Kali pulled the clean nightgown over Nina’s head and down her knees before pulling the blanket back up, tucking her in. “If I tell you one thing, will you promise to be quiet?”

“Yes, I promise.” Of course she wouldn’t.

The woman clasped her hands at her heart and took in a deep breath like someone getting ready to reveal great news. “You won’t be a prisoner much longer. Soon you will be like me.”

Nina gaped at her, horrorstruck at all the possibilities hidden in those words. “What does that mean, be like you?”

The nurse gave her a strange Mona Lisa smile as she began to fasten the straps around Nina’s legs again. “We will know soon enough. Now lie back. Not all the way. You still need to digest that huge meal.”

Nina’s patience was receding like a tide before a tsunami, exposing raw nerves. She supposed they were hoping fancy food would make her into a docile calf, but they were wrong. “No. No, you can’t say things like this and expect me to just take it. Whose side are you on? Whose side do you expect me to be on? Do you think I’m just going to join you and help him do this to someone else? That’s just sick!”

But you liked what he did to your toes, didn’t you? You won’t be able to shake that out of your head, no matter how hard you try. You’d even let him do it again, just so you could close your eyes and think about Joey. Try to deny it.

Shut up shut up shut up!

This little piggy went to the market.

Kali leaned in close. Her eyes were wide and earnest, and Nina could see she’d lined them delicately with liquid liner. Or maybe they were tattooed.“You are very close to good things. Please don’t make this more difficult for yourself.”

This little piggy stayed home.

Nina shoved the taunting voice away to little avail. “In case you didn’t notice, they already are difficult for me. I’m tied to the goddamned bed, my body has been ruined. I’m . . . I’m having a fucking breakdown over here!”

Kali slapped her hard little hand over Nina’s mouth.

This little piggy had roast beef.

“Keep . . . your . . . voice . . . down. I will put a gag in your mouth and keep it there every day if I have to. Barring that, I’ll cut out your tongue. Do you understand?”

This little piggy had none.

Nina fought the urge to gnash her teeth and bite at the cowardly woman’s flesh. That would only make things worse. Instead, she nodded, and a few seconds later, Kali lifted her hand.

“I’m scared. Don’t you understand that? I know you do. I can tell you’re afraid of him, even though you’re helping him. I’m afraid of what he’s going to do to me. What he’s doing to me now.”

And this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home!

Kali smiled. Maternal and insane all in one go. “You don’t need to be afraid. You are his special girl, Nina. He’s been waiting for the right one, and he chose you. That he is being so generous shows you have passed nearly every important test he’s put before you. All that is left is one.”

“What sort of test?”

Kali stood up straight. “I still feel it is too early, but he did say I could do it at any time. And if you don’t pass the first time, we can always try again in a couple of weeks.” She left the room, closing the door most of the way. When she came back, she was reaching into the pocket of her red robe.

Nina pulled away a little, fearing it would be a knife or some other torture device. Would the test be for some new pain threshold? Maybe they were going to carve some sort of symbol on her body or fill a goblet with her blood and drink it and engage in a demonic ritual.

“Don’t . . . please don’t. I don’t want to know. I’ll just lie here and be quiet. See?”

“Don’t fret. Look.”

It took Nina a minute to figure it out. What Kali pulled out of her pocket wasn’t a knife or any other weapon or torture device she’d seen before. It was a white plastic wand with a purple cap. What in the world?

White wand, purple cap. You’ve seen these things before. Seen them a lot, especially in your line of work. Don’t tell me you’ve gone completely stupid. Maybe it’s because you’re only seeing the back of it.

Then the realization set in, and she suddenly wished it was a torture device. Perhaps a big, dull rusty buck knife they would use to slowly cut off pieces of her. Anything but this.

“But I’m on the pill,” she whimpered.

“You haven’t been on the pill for the last six weeks. Besides, the pill isn’t a hundred percent, and I would wager, busy working girl such as yourself, you’ve missed a dose more than once.” That Mona Lisa smile returned, and Nina realized the bitch was actually enjoying this. Possibly was even the orchestrator behind the whole sick charade. Maybe Junior was her pet and not the other way around. Either way, Kali would never be on her side. What else was new? No woman ever had been, really. She bent down beside the bed and came up with the catheter bag and the plastic tub she emptied it into twice a day. “You know, it wasn’t so long ago these tests only worked when a woman was at least eight weeks pregnant. And you had to use the very first urine of the day. Technology has come so far. But still, I like to be careful, which is why I’m not going to put too much faith into a negative result at this time.”

“So this whole time I’ve been here, you’ve been trying to get me pregnant?”

Kali didn’t answer; she didn’t need to. She removed the end of the catheter tube and let the urine wet the end of the pregnancy test as it splashed into the tub. Afterward, she closed off the catheter and replaced the cap on the end of the test and set the wand on the dinner tray.

“They say to wait a few minutes, but I have found that a positive test shows itself much sooner. It’s fun to watch that second line appear in the result window. Would you like to see?”

Nina turned her head away. How many times had Kali done this? And to how many women? She felt stupid for not figuring it out sooner. It was so obvious when she thought about it, and each new realization slammed into the other like dominoes in her head, leading her to a greater understanding. No wonder they were feeding her and nursing her to health. No wonder Junior had stopped playing his little puppet games with her and taken to just watching her from his little nest in the corner. It seemed like he had been waiting for something, and here it was, a little slip of paper encased in cheap plastic.

The thought of carrying this freak’s baby inside her . . . She had no words for the disgust and horror she felt. Suddenly, her huge meal was having second thoughts about its new home.

Morning sickness already, huh?

“That test can’t be positive. It just can’t.”

“On the contrary, you’d better hope it is. Maybe not this test, but certainly the next one. He’s impatient enough as is, and frankly so am I. If he decides you aren’t going to be a fit vessel, then he will . . . not be kind.”

“He’s done this before, hasn’t he? How many times? How many women has he chosen?”

Kali didn’t answer.

Nina shivered while the woman leaned over to check the stick. It wasn’t the Mona Lisa smile she was wearing this time. It was a full-on toothy grin, equal parts happiness and pride. Nina didn’t need to see the results to know what they were. Not with a winning smile like that.

“It looks like you won’t have to worry about any of that.” She held up the stick, and Nina, who had read a number of pregnancy test results in her day, both for herself and a few unlucky girls at the Weeping Willow, knew exactly what she was looking at.

“Kill me,” she pleaded with the woman who was too overjoyed at the moment to hear her. Soon Kali was running from the room, sari flying behind her like a bloody flag. “Good news, my love! Wonderful wonderful news!”

“I’ll kill us both,” Nina whispered to the newly discovered passenger inside her. “Don’t get too comfy in there.”

Chapter 11

Ramón in the Nile

AC was a bad idea. For a reformed gambling addict, going there was like sending a depressed diabetic to a donut shop and daring him not to eat a baker’s dozen, but there weren’t many other options, and besides, the Cassini influence wasn’t particularly strong here. He was better off at this place than in New York. When he arrived, he checked into a cheap little motel a few blocks away from the main strip, paying cash for a week’s stay. He wasn’t ready to approach Benny Rosen just yet. He wanted to get the lay of the land first, know who or what he was dealing with. Jonny Spank had said Rosen wasn’t OG, but it was likely the man didn’t see new fish unannounced. Ramón might need to find someone who could vouch for him first. It was easy enough to do that if he spent a few days poking his nose into a few places around town, listening for the right kind of gossip.

Good luck avoiding them casinos, old man.

That’s exactly what he intended to do.

First, though, he needed to do something about his appearance. Since striking out on his own, he hadn’t done much more than shave off his mustache and pick up a pair of dark sunglasses to hide his face. He couldn’t get away with that forever. He had to be able to hide in plain sight, become a new man. Not look like he was trying to disguise himself.

After a quick check in the room’s phonebook, he found a barber up the street and decided to pay a visit. Maybe take care of his hair and ask a few questions in the process. Barbers were good for information. Their mouths were often busier than their clippers. He walked down a few blocks, keeping to himself. The areas surrounding Atlantic City had never been much to write home about, but it was at its ugliest during the daytime, when the sunlight highlighted all the blemishes. The cracked and littered sidewalks, potholes in the streets, convenience stores with bars on the windows and clerks behind bulletproof glass. Groups of dealers, addicts, and the perpetually broke and unemployed congregated on the corners, catcalling the prettier ladies who walked by. Ramón didn’t feel like he stuck out too much in this hood. He used to be one of them and he could still walk the walk. No one bothered him.

He spotted the striped barber pole, the brightest thing on this stretch, and walked through the door. A black man with wiry gray hair, gold rimmed spectacles, and a white smock put down his newspaper and stood up.

“Afternoon. What’ll it be?”

Ramón removed his hat, running his hand through his mop of salt and pepper hair. “I’m on vacation and looking for a change. Take it all off.”

The man raised his gray caterpillar eyebrows. “Mister, it’s the middle of October. You sure about that?”

Ramón hung up his coat and climbed into the leather barber’s chair. “Oh yeah. I earned my chrome dome card many years ago.”

“You a crazy old fool, but it takes one to know one, I guess.” The barber fastened an apron around Ramón’s neck and fired up his clippers. The insectile buzz gave Ramón a chill. He paused with the clippers hovering over the back of his head. “Last chance to take it all back.”

“I don’t believe in take-backs, my friend.”

Ramón watched years of his life disappear as clumps of hair fell to his shoulders and down the front of his apron. He saw the white twisted scar from a beer bottle Maria had broken over his head after a nasty fight, not long before she died. He saw the angry punk who had driven her to do it, too. The punk was older now, more wrinkled. His face was a little rounder, his neck and jowls beginning to sag, age spots dotting his forehead, but the eyes hadn’t changed a bit and that made all those other things irrelevant. Now his old self was exposed again like a bad nerve. He just hoped he was a little smarter this time.

The barber switched off the clippers. “That close enough for you, or do you want to take it all the way down to clean flesh?”

Ramón had originally planned to finish the shaving himself, but what the hell. He was already here. Besides, he needed a little more time to talk to the man. “Let’s do the full treatment. Head and face, hot towel, the whole nine.”

The old barber cackled. “When you here to gamble, it’s best to go all in.” He went to a little metal chest and pulled out two steaming white towels. After leaning Ramón back in the chair, he applied them to Ramón’s face and freshly shaved head. The warmth made him sigh, and a moderately sized boulder rolled off his back, at least for now.

“I haven’t been out this way in years,” Ramón said after a couple minutes. “Lots of new casinos.”

“The buildins change, but it’s still just money changin’ hands. I don’t pay it much mind these days. It’s a rich man’s game.”

“How about that new Blue Diamond resort, though? Looks more Vegas than AC.”

“That you right about. Fella who owns it is a Mr. Inner-City Charity Man. Folks ’round here love Mr. Rosen, but if you ask me, someone that squeaky clean is probably dirtier than a barnyard pig. I been around long enough to see a lot of ’em come and go. They suck this place dry and then move out west somewhere.”

The barber peeled off the hot towels and applied warm shave cream to Ramón’s face and neck with a brush, moving in smooth circular motions. “It’s too early to tell what this Rosen fella gonna do with this place. I hear ’bout all sorts of plans in the works. He bought up a few failed properties and got to work building that resort. New construction happening all over the place with his name on it. Apparently he’s into all that fancy internet stuff, too, even built him a casino in China. Bet you dollars to donuts that’s where his real money’s at. They all in with the Chinese nowadays. The whole makin’ friends with the local brown folk is just a front.”

Ramón tried not to grin, especially since the old man was gliding a cutthroat razor along his chin with well-practiced speed and grace, but there was undoubtedly truth to all of it. You don’t go into the gambling business because you’re an altruist at heart.

“He ever come in here?” Ramón asked. He figured he already knew the answer to that question. Men like Rosen enjoy the view of the slums best from the top floor. But it was just a way to keep the conversation going, see what other nuggets he could dig up.

“Actually, yeah, he did come in here once. About two years ago, it was. I just wasn’t in here that day. I had myself a nasty case of kidney stones and my son was fillin’ in for me. He met Mr. Rosen. Shook his hand and even gave him a free neck trim.”

“You don’t say?” Ramón was genuinely surprised.

“Yessir. Guess it was just his way of tryin’ to rub elbows. Make sure us common folk are smilin’ when he comes back to knock down a few more city blocks so he can build another palace where he can hire us to wash the toilets.”

“Sounds like a great guy.”

“Yeah, well, my boy got a fifty dollar tip for removing a few hairs from the man’s neck. He took his lady out for a nice supper, and she was happy ’bout that. That’s how they get us in the end. We take the little scraps they throw at us and we become their friends for life. Like dogs.”

“So does that mean I don’t have to tip you?”

The barber laughed. “Shoot, I guess you got me there.” He was nearly done with the job. Ramón’s newly shorn head was gleaming. “That’s one nasty scar you got here. Been in many bar fights?”

“You could say that.”

He finished up, wiping the little streaks of shaving cream off Ramón’s face and neck with a damp towel. Then he applied a nice aftershave and removed the apron, giving Ramón’s neck and shoulders a good cleaning with his horsehair brush.

“Well, did I do like you wanted? Make you a new man?”

Ramón grinned at the new reflection of his old self. “It’s a full transformation.”

***

With no conscious decision to do so, he passed the motel after leaving the barbershop and took a cross street toward the boardwalk. He decided to leave off his hat, and the brisk October sea air whipped around his freshly bald scalp like a cold tongue. It made him feel alert, vibrant. The boardwalk was a lively tourist attraction, at least during the summer months when heady smells of roasted nuts and hot dogs mingled with the ocean breeze and couples strolled by hand in hand, browsing at the many cheap souvenir trinkets on sale.

But now, with October slowly giving way to November, it felt cold and lonely. Forlorn. Without any nighttime neon to give them life, the storefronts looked cheap and fake, the casinos resembling something that would fall like foam and cardboard replicas if the wind blew hard enough. All the outdoor cafes had been shuttered for the year, and only the most popular food vendors remained open, hocking their wares to passersby. Visitors stayed holed up inside the resorts to avoid the chill, fattening the pockets of the casino owners. At night, this place would become even more unsavory as the prostitutes and dealers and purse-snatchers began their shifts. It was common knowledge that even in the best of times, it was never a good idea to head outside after dark.

Ramón saw the cold silver and glass exterior of the Blue Diamond well before he reached it. The casino was easily the largest building on the strip, dwarfing long-standing giants like Trump Plaza and the Taj Mahal. Its modern curves and swoops made it look even more out of place, like someone had plucked it out of the year 2020 and plopped it here among all the relics with their hard corners and dirty concrete.

Ramón didn’t have to meet Benny Rosen to know the man was both vain and ridiculous. Perhaps even insane, like Jonny Spank said. Not unlike the man he was currently trying to escape.

Just leave now, old man. Don’t dick around with this weasel. Find your own way. You don’t have to leave the country. Just head west. New Mexico, California. This country is big enough to lose yourself in forever.

No. It wouldn’t be far enough. His redemption and his peace lay in the land of his grandfathers. He’d come to believe the soil of this place was cursed, and the suitcase of cash currently resting beneath the bed of his motel room had been set before him for a reason: to carry his ass to Baja. The Cassinis would find him eventually if he didn’t take proper measures, and if Jonny Spank had been right about Benny Rosen having a bone to pick with Victor, this was the place he needed to be. Doing business with a Cassini rival was the only assurance he had to make sure this would go right.

He just hoped the man wouldn’t ask for too much money. Ramón knew of guys way back in the day who could erase a person. New name, new numbers, new everything. He didn’t know any of them personally. The people who could do it lived so far off the grid you had to climb a phone tree about six numbers high before you could get the guy who could get the guy. Usually the fee was five figures, but Ramón estimated it would be six these days. Hopefully Rosen could hook him up with such a person. He’d even pay a little extra for it to happen quicker. Half his loot would be more than enough south of the border.

Time to move, old man. You came all this way. Don’t pussy out now.

“Right.” Ramón took one more deep breath and stepped into the sea of lights, hope, and loss known as the Blue Diamond Resort.

He hated casinos. Most real gamblers did, the way most people hated coming into work on Monday. To folks like him, gambling was no recreational pleasure. It was a sworn duty to please the luck gods by any means necessary. The blinging chinging chaos of a gambling floor was the rock in the pipe, the snick of the lighter, the first inhale, the initial rush, the inevitable burnout, and the crushing self-loathing bringing you full circle for another ride on the crazy train. And that was before you even bought your chips.

He’d stepped out of the cold and into a web of possibility, where every jingle of every machine, every molecule of sweat and smoke, every click of every chip, every roll of dice was connected, and each person’s outcome, win or lose, was an essential stepping stone to his victory. The gods were hovering over this place, waiting to anoint some lucky loser a Winner, and he wanted so much to be that crowned recipient, but he wasn’t here to gamble, no matter how strong the tug. He had a mission.

C’mon, old man! Just one game, a few chips. A little scratch for your little itch.

He could all but hear the shuffling decks, feel the cards’ slick coating as he rubbed them together, flicked them and fanned them, the secret and sensual foreplay before laying them down on a bed of soft green felt. Fully spread, the goddess would reveal her sweet secrets to all who watched, hoping she might be the fairest of them all so she could shower him with praise and riches. The pull of his long buried habit was so strong, he was certain no time had passed since the day he gave it all up and put on the driver’s cap for the Madam. All he had to do was run a hand over his freshly shaved head to strengthen the illusion of those corrupt years, when the metaphorical lady in his hand was more important than the one he left at home every night to wonder if there would be money for Alejandro’s lunch in the morning.

Then he remembered he only had a few bucks in his pocket, having taken only a little spending money from the suitcase before he left. Just enough for a haircut and maybe some lunch, and after going big at the barber, he didn’t even really have enough left for that. He’d thought ahead to this very moment, when temptation would give way to his downfall and dash his renaissance into a million pieces.

A well-defined path meandered through the jungle of games to the reservation area on the other side, and he walked quickly, head down, not acknowledging the scrawny old ladies holding vigil at the slots, or a showy dealer fanning out a few decks in front of astonished tourists who were obviously on their first trip to America’s Playground. He would not give the slightest nod to the clatter of the white marble bouncing around the roulette wheel, the enthusiastic request of a man asking his girlfriend to blow on his dice for luck, the warbling bell signaling that a rare bulimic poker machine was ready to vomit up a small glut of gold coins. All of these sensations passed through him like meaningless phantoms as he forced his eyes to remain on the red and orange carpet with big blue harlequins serving as a tacky artistic representation of the casino’s name.

And the sweat trickling down his temples and his back right now? Just a little warm in here, that’s all.

He stepped onto the blue marble floor of the front lobby with a huff, like a kid who had just reached the “safe spot” in a game of tag. He goggled at the glass cathedral ceilings that soared high overhead, the enormous LED chandeliers dangling from them looked like strange spacecraft, but were at closer inspection more blue diamonds. All the fixtures, as well as the reservation counter, were chrome and brushed steel, adding to the ultra modern feel of the place. It was, at first glance, like a building one would find in the most chic part of Manhattan, but something about it reminded Ramón of a whore wearing too much makeup. It was too ornate. The fake plants, the gaudy twisted metal sculpture sitting just inside the door, the strange aliens-meets-Ancient Egypt paintings on the walls. All of it felt too obnoxious to be anything more than kitsch.

He was about to head toward the reservation desk to ask for Rosen when he saw something that sent him stumbling backward a few steps in shock. The Madam, dressed head to toe in her standard black—black dress, black coat of some indeterminate species of fur, black hat, shoes, purse—hair blazing like an acetylene torch, was walking toward the building. Ramón noticed something new about her, though: her left eye was covered with a black eye patch, making her look like the world’s classiest bandit. She walked through one of the enormous revolving doors and into the Blue Diamond, her nose pointed high, gait sturdy and direct like she owned the place. She even tipped one of the receptionists a brief wave and a thin smile without slowing her stride.

Although she likely wouldn’t have recognized him at first glance, he ducked behind a fake palm tree, watching her glide toward the bank of elevators at the far end, oblivious.

Alive, goddamn it. The bitch was alive. And she was here of all places.

She hadn’t gotten away unscathed, though. The eye patch wasn’t the only clue. That same side of her face looked mottled, as if from terrible acne. She’d likely gone to great lengths to cover it with makeup, but the damage was still visible. He’d done that, and despite his disappointment at this new development, seeing her wounds filled him with a certain measure of pride. He could still smell the smoke and her burnt flesh from that night only a couple weeks ago. He could hear her screams, even over the ringing in his ears caused by the deafening report of the pistol in such a confined space.

If only he’d been able to aim a little to the left. Her whole face might have been gone.

But his pride at roughing up his old boss did nothing to change the facts. His current plan was in the shitter. They were both here presumably to see the same person, and this realization filled him with an almost immeasurable despair and rage.

You don’t know for sure she’s here to see Rosen. Maybe she’s having herself a little holiday.

He almost laughed in spite of himself. Right. Two times he’d had to escort the woman down here over the years for minor business errands, and she didn’t even want to get out of the car. AC to a racist, elitist bitch like the Madam was like an outhouse to a germophobe. Something of major importance brought her down here to Benny Rosen’s casino. She was doing some kind of deal with him. Maybe it was even something separate from Victor. It was common knowledge to those who ran in the Cassini circle that the two of them regularly butted heads. Ramón had heard all sorts of other rumors about them too, some of them too sick to be true, but he knew the money from Ballas was going toward something big. Something that would allow her to do some sort of family power grab. With Rosen in her corner, the Madam’s little pipedream might just have a chance of happening.

And did he really want to be around when that happened?

He waited for the bitch’s elevator door to close before he stepped out from behind the palm. Leave. Get the hell out of here before someone spots you, old man. She might be here with someone both of you know.

That was doubtful. Maybe she had a new driver now, but if she was down here behind Victor’s back, it was more likely she’d found a more anonymous way here. No, he wasn’t going to leave just yet. He was tired of running. He wanted to leave, yes. Wanted to be away from this place so bad he could taste it. But he would leave of his own accord, when he was good and goddamn ready. There was a tavern just inside the lobby called The Nile. Ramón decided he could do with a few drinks and ambled inside.

It was early enough in the day that most of the seats at the bar were empty. He took the one on the far end and waited for the bartender to come down his way. It had been a long time since he took a drink. Alcohol had never been too big of a devil for him by itself. It was the thing the booze made him want to do he had to worry about. He started folding a cocktail napkin into a little airplane.

You know, you could always just go back to your room, get your money, and have the time of your life. Maybe you leave richer, likely you wind up dead, but man, what a way to go, right?

“What can I get for ya, Michelangelo?”

Ramón looked up to see the bartender standing in front of him, towel slung over one shoulder. She was cute. Round face, blonde hair cut into one of those asymmetrical jobs a lot of women got these days. She looked about Alejandro’s age, though it was sometimes tough to tell with women who knew how to paint on a good face, and this one did. Black eyeliner, red lips and all.

“Michelangelo?”

She pointed to his weak attempt at origami. “Just admiring your little sculpture there.”

“Oh. Something cheap on tap.”

“You got it, high roller.” She grabbed a tumbler and pulled the lever marked Budweiser. He hated the stuff, but like most things about America, it wasn’t meant to be savored. It was a single purpose tonic to be chugged by the quart.

She laid down a new napkin, sprinkled some salt on it from a nearby shaker, and set down the glass of beer.

“That to make the napkin taste good?” he asked.

“Little trick my granny taught me. Keeps your napkin from sticking to the glass.”

He grunted. “Guess I’m not too old to learn new things after all.” He took a long swig of the beer.

“You wanna pay for this one or keep it open?”

Ramón reached into his pocket and pulled out his one remaining ten. “I’ll take as many as that will buy me.”

She laughed. He liked the cynical edge it had. “That’ll get you three. Two if you want to leave a decent tip to a hard working college student.”

He tipped his glass to her and grinned. “To higher education, it is.”

“Good man.” She walked away to the other man sitting at the end. “Cashing out, Carl?”

“Yeah, guess I should. The Missus is gonna have my goose cooked when I get home, regardless.”

“Buy her some flowers on the way,” she said.

“Shoot. First thing she’ll ask me is how much I paid for ’em. Don’t worry. I’ll take it like a man. I’ll see you tomorrow, Jessie.” He stood up, his shoulders stooped like a man who’s hunched over a lot of cards in his day. Ramón knew the posture well. Too well.

“Bet you see a lot of that in here,” Ramón said after the man shuffled off.

She looked at him. “You have no idea. I think I should probably put part-time debt counselor on my resume.”

Ramón nodded and continued drinking his beer.

“So what’s your name?” she asked.

“Ra—Hermann.”

“Nice to meet you, Rahermann. Guess you just heard my name. Jessie.”

“Sorry, I meant Hermann.”

“Hey, it’s all right if you don’t want to use your real name. Lots of people are somebody else here.”

“Fair enough. So are you really Jessie, then?”

“If I told you that, it would defeat the purpose.” She gave a coy look Ramón could almost swear was flirtatious, but for the fact she was probably the same way with every man who walked in here. He was used to seeing those looks from the girls at the Weeping Willow, too. He’d learned over the years there was something about him that made younger women feel comfortable. Maybe it was the dumb jokes he used to tell them to lighten the mood when he had to drive them somewhere they didn’t want to go. He wished he knew what it was now, because he would get rid of it. Any other time, it was a gift, but now it was a curse. This girl would remember him if asked.

“What are you going to school for?” he asked. He couldn’t help it. Small talk was his thing, and since he was already here, he might as well make the best of it.

“I want to be President someday. Barring that, a humble medical tech. Either or.”

“I’d take the med job.”

She sighed and started wiping glasses with her towel. “Good call. Nobody likes the President. Doesn’t matter how good you are. Half the country will always hate you just because you’re wearing the wrong label.”

“Probably wouldn’t be doing it right if they all liked you.”

Ramón drained his beer, and Jessie immediately began to pour him his next one. She set it down in front of him. “So what’s your story, Hermann? What brings you to AC? Got some money you’re trying to lose?”

“Isn’t that why anybody comes here?”

“You wouldn’t believe some of the stories I’ve heard. But there’s something different about you. I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

The way she was looking at him right now made him feel wrong. Oh so wrong. But oh so right. She was engaging in a skillful dance, and he was letting her lead. It was stupid, but he needed a little stupid right now, and the beer was hitting him just right. It took his mind off his dismal situation.

“I left my old job recently. Came here to find new work, but it turns out my former employer is complicating things.”

“That sucks. Who did you work for?”

He looked at her, really looked at her for the first time since they started talking. She was younger than he originally guessed. Her eyes told all. A young girl who thought she was world wise. Maybe she had a kid. Yeah, that must have been it. How else to explain the later than average start to pursuing a bland tech degree? Working in a bar where strange men regularly came in to flirt with her and spill out their woes on a fog of alcohol breath probably made her feel confident. Wanted. But none of it changed the fact that she was just a kid with a limited worldview. She didn’t have the wounded-bordering-on-dead look of an indentured working girl. She didn’t have frown lines. Not yet.

“I worked for the worst people anybody could ever work for, and I think that’s all I’m going to say about that.” He drained his beer, set down the glass, and stood up. “Hope the college money helps.”

“And another man of mystery just drifts in and out of my life.” She grinned and picked up his glass, depositing it into a tub behind the bar.

Just walk away, old man. Walk away. Don’t do what you’re thinking of doing. Like a practiced limo driver, he put up a partition between the voice and himself. “How old are you? I know it’s rude to ask a woman this, but I’m curious.”

“Damn right it’s rude. Lucky for you, I’m not as vain as I look. Thirty-four. Can I guess yours?”

“Sure.”

She looked him up and down, and Ramón suddenly felt self-conscious about everything. The girl was older than he thought she was, a couple years older than Alejandro. She was still a kid by his standards—still young enough to be his kid. But maybe her smarts and dry sense of humor weren’t just an act. There was something more to her. She reminded him a bit of someone. Someone he didn’t want to think of.

Nina.

“I’m imagining you with hair,” Jessie said. “Men with shaved heads always look a few years younger. But I’m going to say . . . fifty-four.”

He felt a tingle at the base of his spine, like she’d looked right into him and pushed a button that few people ever saw. “Good guess. Must be from working so close to a casino. Maybe I should take you out to the roulette table.”

“Maybe you should take me out to lunch. I’m off in an hour.”

Jesus, she was direct. The voice of reason in his head was pounding on the divider he’d put up, telling him to knock this shit off and get his head back in the game, he was in the same building as the woman he’d robbed and tried to kill, and he should be a hundred miles away from here right now, not contemplating a date with a bartender who was still a girl.

“I just need to run back to my motel room for a bit. Should I meet you back here?”

“I’ll meet you outside on the boardwalk. Don’t keep me waiting too long, though. I’m going to be hungry.”

Chapter 12

Madam in the Mirror

She carefully applied her makeup before the mirror in Benny Rosen’s enormous bathroom. The place was ridiculous in all the right and wrong ways. Heated marble floors, a tub deep and wide enough to fit an Olympic swim team comfortably, a big flat screen television mounted at an appropriate viewing distance. There was a toilet and a bidet, naturally, showerheads nearly two feet wide, a towel warmer, and a wine fridge in an adjacent closet.

The Madam had lived in apartments half the size of this one room. In fact, she was sure it was nearly as big as her living quarters at the Weeping Willow.

She hated ostentatious displays of wealth. It ran counter to how her family had always done things, which was to buy what you need, but don’t show off about it. Keep your best things under wraps so people can always underestimate you. That had been Dante’s credo, anyway . . . But she loved this room, despite that lifetime of conditioning. She also hated how she was getting stupid over a man, but she loved how he made her feel. It was a real push and pull of opposing forces going on inside her head, and it made her feel more alive than she had in years.

The last two weeks had been a fog of sex, food, and pillowtalk planning. After they made love—during which she came at least once, for crying out loud—he would come in here and draw a hot bath for her before showering and dressing and heading back downstairs to his office. A few hours later, he would call down to the kitchen for lunch to be sent up to the apartment, where he’d join her and then follow it up with another voracious fuck session. Same for dinner. Same for dessert and late night snacks. Rinse and repeat, until Clayton would take her home for the next day or two to keep up appearances with Victor. She’d taken to telling him she was spending time at their place in Montauk, so she could recover from the shooting in seclusion. It gave her the air of being even more depressed about her condition than she actually was, and Victor didn’t ask questions. Frankly, Benny was doing a lot to keep her brother too busy with some new Chinese gambling venture to wonder about her, which was just fine with the Madam.

As long as she remained Quasimodo hiding out in the bell tower, everything would work out just fine.

“Give him the illusion he still has full control of you and the brothel,” Benny had said. “Make yourself invisible to him. Everything will work itself out soon enough.” He’d had three meetings with Victor, and they were close to making a deal. Apparently, Victor was suitably impressed with the money that would be flowing in from overseas. Too bad he was never going to see a real dime of it. Benny was treating it as nothing more than a transfer of assets. “Once construction begins on the resort in Shanghai, we won’t need him anymore,” he’d said. “We’ll send him over there to oversee the groundbreaking and shake a few hands, and he won’t make it back. Tragedies happen all the time on construction sites. Especially in China. And all that money he took from you will be right back where it belongs.”

Victor, of course, never said a word to her about any of it when he visited. Not that he would. He had no idea she was sharing a bed with his new business partner and privy to everything coming down the pipeline. The Madam, who had lived most of her life in the shadows, was comfortable enough remaining mum, even if it meant the iron fist with which she once ruled the Weeping Willow had grown soft. The little piece of the kingdom Victor had seen fit to give her was no longer enough. She’d washed her hands of it, leaving his men to run the place in her stead. They were undoubtedly dipping their wicks free of charge, but what did she care?

At some point, the girls would start to revolt. Perhaps they would even escape once they realized the temporary management was not exactly temporary. She hoped they would, if only to make things more difficult for Victor. He came by when she was in town to look in on her. Or, more appropriately, to make sure she was still helpless and alone, something she found increasingly difficult to fake, but she was able to manage with enough Valium in her bloodstream. Thankfully, he kept his dick in his pants. With the thought of a new empire weighing heavily on his mind, Victor’s appetite for rape had all but vanished.

“You must appear as desperate as possible,” Benny said. “He should contemplate ending you.”

“What if he actually does end me?”

He kissed her head and pulled her closer. “I’ll never let that happen, darling Contessa. It’s all part of the plan. Do you trust me?”

No would have been her first answer. The only man she ever trusted was dead, and if Dante had appeared before her right then, she would have revoked that trust for all the power he’d left in his son’s hands.  Losing her face and her hidden fortune had shaken her foundations deeply, making her more emotionally vulnerable than she’d ever been previously. Ramón and Victor took away everything in one fell swoop, leaving her a bloody and penniless heap, but Benny was building her back up, caring for her the way a kind Samaritan might nurse a wounded animal back to health. But it was more than that. They were a good match out of bed as well as in. She’d known before she ever thought of sleeping with him they would make a powerful duo. He could never know everything, especially regarding her true lineage with Victor. It would spoil his appetite for her, and she couldn’t handle that sort of blow. Not again. Not this time.  The Madam wasn’t one to examine her feelings too closely, however. She merely acknowledged their presence and decided they had changed sufficiently enough to tell him yes, she did trust him.

And after she told him, they made love for hours, and with each passing orgasm, she felt less and less shocked that such a small man with unassuming looks could make her feel almost feral with passion. All she had to do now was be patient and wait for all of Benny’s carefully laid plans to fall into place. For once, take a back seat and let someone else steer her to her desired destination.

She stopped in the middle of putting another layer of powder over the welts on her face and neck. They were nearly healed, and she was confident they would be completely gone after a few months. Unfortunately, that was the least of her worries where recovery was concerned. She looked down at the wasted half of her chest, still bandaged. Unlike her face and teeth and even her missing eye, she still had trouble accepting what had happened to her breast. Necessity forced her several days ago to get up the gumption to change the dressings herself, and while the damage  wasn’t as horrible as she imagined, it was still pretty damn bad. The flesh looked almost melted in places, and the aureole was nearly gone but for a half-moon of pink on the bottom. Genetics hadn’t seen fit to gift her with a lot of beauty in the looks department, but she’d once been proud of her breasts. They weren’t very big, but they were symmetrical and perky, even as she passed into her forties. Now it looked as if some fraudulent doctor in a third-world country had given her a shoddy mastectomy. Benny hadn’t minded. He gave her one intact breast all the attention in the world, even kissing the uncovered areas around her damaged one with tenderness.

He didn’t dare offer to get her plastic surgery, knowing it would only hurt her if he was the first to bring it up. Benny was a perceptive man. But his careful and loving attention didn’t replace her destroyed pride. Her revulsion. No makeup would fix this, and even if she did get cosmetic surgery to repair the worst of it, she would die with these scars on her body. And even if she awoke one morning miraculously whole again, face, tits, and all, it wouldn’t erase the reality that yet another man had humiliated her. Had taken what was hers.

Her one remaining eye glared out of a face made dull and cakey from the attempts to cover up her shame with expensive powder and foundation. This wasn’t right. All the years, all the careful planning, and that fucking spic had taken everything with the pull of a trigger. And he was out there somewhere, right now, enjoying his spoils. She imagined him drinking a piña colada on the beach in some tin shack Mexican town, watching the waves rolling in and laughing. Laughing at her, laughing at how he’d finally gotten one over on that ruthless bitch at the Weeping Willow. The one who had even offered to make him a partner. Because wasn’t that what happened when you took a man for a partner? How stupid could she be?

Her rage, bubbling just beneath the surface ever since she awoke to find she could only see the world through one side of her face, finally erupted. She screamed, throwing the makeup compact at the mirror. To her astonishment, the hard plastic knocked out a chip of the glass, from which several large cracks immediately branched into dozens of tiny ones, fracturing her reflection for a brief second before the whole works came down in a rain of shards.

She turned around in time to feel several tiny pieces fly out and nick her naked back. All the better to match the scars on my face. She could have easily lost her other eye if she’d been a millisecond slower. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.  Finish the job so she’d never have to look at herself again. Or maybe she could pick up one of the biggest shards right now and slice her wrists or throat with it, like one of her girls had done. Rosie, the smart-mouthed little chola who went into the Ballas house and came out with her mind broken into about as many pieces as the mirror in Benny Rosen’s bathroom. That had been an expensive cleanup. Not the body—one of Victor’s specialists disposed of the girl and mopped up all the blood without a word. But the Madam paid dearly that night when Victor came for a visit. He didn’t like wasting the talent of his men “cleaning up whore blood,” he’d said. She shuddered when she remembered how he’d tied her up, how he’d choked her until he came. She could have died, would have preferred it. If only his ancient pecker had been a little longer on the draw.

No, she refused to check out early. Not before she could see Victor lose everything. She intended to make that happen, with or without Benny’s help.

After her heart slowed to its normal pace, she carefully stood up and put on her robe, avoiding the pieces of mirror littering the marble floor like a broken disco ball. Benny would be upstairs soon. He would be expecting lunch and a nice fuck, but the Madam’s appetite had changed.

***

She was flipping through a magazine, not really reading it, when he came in and made his usual dash to the bathroom. A second later, she heard his surprised shouts from the other side of the door, and he came dashing out into the living room.

“My god, Tessa, are you okay? What happened?”

He looked genuinely worried, and for a moment the weak love-starved kitten in her wanted to take control, go to him, and tell him she was sorry, it was an accident, she was okay. But there would be none of that. Not right now. The broken mirror brought some clarity back into her mind. That, and the name he’d just called her felt like a slap to the face. It was the one Victor liked to use. She imagined Benny had picked it up after all his meetings with the pig.

“Don’t call me that,” she said, turning back to her magazine, enjoying the slippery feel of the pages in her fingers. “Don’t ever call me Tessa.”

For a minute, he stood there looking like a flummoxed goat, his bushy eyebrows knit together in confusion. “What would you prefer I called you?”

She put down the magazine and plucked out something she’d been concealing in her robe—a four-inch piece of broken mirror, its base wrapped in a hand towel. Gripping it, she held it up and pointed the tip in his direction. “Ever since we began this little adventure of ours, you’ve called me honey, baby, darling Madam, Contessa, Connie, and Tess. You’ve never called me Tessa. You may call me any of those other names. You may even call me Queen Cunt of the Amazon, but if you call me Tessa one more time, I’m going to jump up from this couch like something on springs and cut you with this piece of mirror. You won’t even know I’ve moved until you’re bleeding out on your fancy cashmere carpet. Understand?”

He ran a hand through his thinning curly mop before taking a seat in one of the U-shaped chairs across from her. His stiff body language matched that of someone who had just walked into his house to find it rigged with a very large bomb.

“Okay. Contessa. Let’s talk. What is this? What happened in the bathroom?”

“I didn’t like what I was seeing, so I broke it.”

“But . . . But why? I don’t . . .” He rubbed his face and the Madam felt a brief bit of pity for him. He was trying very hard not to upset her more. He, Benny Rosen, the ambitious and rich Jew who was in the middle of buying up half the Jersey shore and millions in cheap Chinese real estate looked like he wanted to find his mommy and climb into her lap. The Madam felt her chest warming up the way it did when she had one of her girls shaking in the corner for running the hot water too long in the shower. She relished that feeling, oh yes. It had been far too long since she’d experienced it.

“What’s your plan?” she asked.

“Plan? What do you mean?”

Her temper flared and Benny, who must have seen something dangerous in her eye, leaned back in the chair. “With me! With all of this. You’re planning something else, some alternative agenda, and I want to know what it is!”

“Tess, Contessa, I assure you, I don’t have any other agenda.”

She flew off the couch and aimed the tip of the broken glass at his bobbing Adam’s apple. His eyes were wide behind his glasses, but he wasn’t sweating. If she’d seen one bead of sweat, she would have ended him right then and there.

“You’ve been plying me for weeks. Making me soft. Making me depend on you, all so I won’t notice when you hamstring me, like you plan to do with Victor. Once you have all that money in your pocket.”

“Tess, you came to me, remember? You had nothing, nowhere else to go. I agreed to help you, and that’s what I’m doing. That’s all I’m doing now. There are no other cards up my sleeve. Please . . . put down the glass. If you hurt me, you’ll be right back where you were.”

“I’d kill you and then kill myself. I’d rather die than let another man take advantage of me. Do you understand that? I have nothing more to lose that you swinging dicks haven’t already taken from me!”

“Yes. I do understand that. I truly do. Please, Tess . . .” He reached up and brushed her hand, which had begun to tremble. She didn’t want to believe him. Couldn’t! No man this powerful acted out of kindness and generosity. He was a criminal, a sociopath shyster just like her brother, like every man she’d ever known, and there was no honesty among thieves.

Inexplicably, her hand turned traitor and released the glass shard. It fell to the carpet with a thump, and Benny promptly stomped on it like a Jewish groom before the big mazel tov. He took her face in his hands and drew her in for a long kiss. The Madam remained rigid at first, but finally gave in. Just as she always did. The love-starved kitten came forward, groping at him like she was drowning.

He drove her backward toward the couch, ripping away her robe as she yanked at his belt buckle when a sudden hot pain ripped through her chest as his hand found her wounded right breast and squeezed, his thumb driving straight into the ruined aureole. She screamed and the world went super bright with agony. Her stomach started churning and she thought she was going to throw up.  She pulled away from him, but he held her fast in his lean but deceptively powerful arms. “If you ever threaten me again, I’ll hurt you, Contessa. Do you understand me?”

She looked in his eyes and saw a capering and tenacious meanness there she’d never seen before. It reminded her so much of Victor she nearly screamed again, but then his other hand gently squeezed her left nipple, and he planted soft kisses down her neck, one by one. She sighed and let him take her down to the couch, where he parted her legs and began kissing his way down to what lay between. The wound on her chest was throbbing painfully and a spot of blood about the size of a half dollar bloomed onto the white satin, but the hurt and the shock of the injury was gradually being washed away by his gentle touches everywhere else.

“If you hurt me again, I’ll kill you,” she murmured as his tongue slid into her cleft. She shivered and moaned, arching her back.

Benny looked up, the mad sparkle in his eyes now enhanced by his sexual excitement. “I’d like to see you try.” He buried his head between her thighs and she let herself float away.

***

Two hours later, Clayton was driving her home. She used the time to consider her options. Despite the very strange morning she’d just had, she wasn’t ready to give up on Benny just yet. After they’d finished their sex, the most ferocious round of it yet, he was as tender and loving as a kitten. He’d massaged her, changed the dressings on her breast, and even got a little teary-eyed when he saw the damage he’d done. Forgive me, Tess. Please forgive me. My mother always said my temper would hurt everyone I ever loved, but I never want to hurt you, ever.

He’d begged her forgiveness, and she had no choice but to accept if she hoped to leave at a decent hour, but she didn’t really forgive him and never would. He concealed that lunatic spark of his well, but it would appear again, and she didn’t intend to be around when it did. But there  was too much at stake to back out right now. The most important thing was that Victor be dealt with, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d be heading overseas to Shanghai never to return. At least she wouldn’t have to get her hands dirty. While she wanted nothing more than to feel Victor’s life run out of him, she realized she was still too physically weak to have those honors to herself. Her pride, prodigious as it was, had limits. Whatever happened following that, she would deal with. And deal with it she would have to sooner or later.

The cow-eyed girl act never suited her much anyway. The sex that came along with it was great, but it was also a distraction, and if she were distracted, asleep behind the wheel, she would miss something vital, like Benny attempting to strangle her in her sleep or slipping poison into her coffee. Or whatever he did when he no longer required someone’s company. She didn’t believe he loved her. That was nonsense, and she knew that on a personal level. People like the two of them were incapable of such a thing. She knew she was just a sex toy to him, something he could manipulate in his off time while he worked on bigger and better things, but like most play things, she would become boring to him. He would require a different sort of amusement, and frankly, so would she. But most importantly, this wasn’t supposed to become the Rosen Empire. She was still a Cassini, and she didn’t intend to let Benny or any of those fucks on the Commission forget that name. There was only one seat at the top of the heap, and it belonged to her. And anyone who tried to squash her or ruin her as she tried to claim what was hers would howl for mercy by the time she was through with them.

That made her think of Ramón, the one who’d started this particular ball rolling. The one who had tried to squash her. Even if she miraculously recouped the millions she’d lost and achieved her original goal of shoving her brother out of the picture and fulfilling Dante’s true wish, it would still not erase what the thieving Mexican had made her into, a pile of ash from which she was now struggling to rise like a phoenix. He would receive his due one way or another, and he would receive it from her. No other alternative would be acceptable. No one escaped without reprisal. No one committed a misdeed against a Cassini and walked away. She’d spent the last twenty years of her life milking remittances out of common whores. Getting what was rightfully hers was in her blood.

Speaking of remittances and common whores. . . There was another itch she had to scratch, but hadn’t been able to for many weeks. The trip she’d been intending to take the night Ramón shot her in the face and left her for dead had never been completed. Ballas was still minding his roost up there, and even if he had in fact left an extra case of money to compensate her for the purchase of Nina, he never consulted her first. He never asked permission to buy. In the Madam’s mind, no deal had been made. She’s still mine. The odds were overwhelming the girl was dead by now, but there was no telling for sure. The Madam never got any confirmation one way or another that the girls she sold back to him were killed. Maybe he was forming some kind of ruined whore commune up there, and they were all feeding off of that fortune he was squatting on. Equal parts curiosity and indignation burned in her gut, along with a slight trickle of fear. The man who had done those things to her girls made Victor seem like an innocent choir boy by comparison. You sure you want to go messing around with that? Picking at that scab?

“Clayton, how do you feel about making a little side trip?”

“What sort of side trip, Ma’am?”

“Are you familiar with the Ballas house a little ways upstate?”

Silence. “Yes, Ma’am. I believe so,” he finally said.

“There’s an extra hundred dollars in it for you if you take me up there. And another hundred for the price of your discretion in the matter.”

He frowned at her in the rearview mirror, like he was a trifle offended by her offer. “I can’t take more than small tips, Ma’am. Mister Rosen pays me to drive you anywhere you want to go. But can I ask why you want to go pokin’ around up there?”

That was a good question. There was nothing good waiting at the Ballas house.  But she needed an ace in the hole, even if it was a very demented ace in a very scary hole. Besides, she was only going to look. “Don’t worry yourself about that, Clayton. You just handle the driving.”

The black man gave a single and solemn nod. “Yes, Ma’am.”

Chapter 13

Nina’s Lesson in Purity

A miscarriage would come. It was inevitable. After everything she had been through, all the stress, the poor nutrition. The certainty the thing growing in her womb would expel itself grew by the day. The hour. If she even was pregnant, which itself was doubtful. She’d been fucking men for a living for years. Even with a few missed pills now and then, she’d never once had a scare. Her uterus was an impenetrable fortress, her menses an atomic clock of regularity.

Nevertheless, the dark and lonely hours following Kali’s horrifying revelation were filled with deep and determined meditation aimed directly at the alleged being inside her. Out. Get out. You are not welcome here. She anticipated every twinge of pain from her healing womanhood to be the start of a cramp, and she would have gladly suffered the pain of her grotesque rape all over again if it meant her body was disposing of the cluster of cells growing inside her like a cancer.

You could always scare yourself up a clothes hanger. You know, once they decide to trust you again and stop strapping you down.

Yes. Earn their trust, and then open the escape hatch for the demonic progeny. Nina tried to imagine how she would go about performing an abortion on herself. Inserting the looped end of a clothes hanger, pushing until she’d broken through the stubborn wall of her cervix, twisting and scraping and stimulating the contractions that would wash it all away. She would undoubtedly perforate her uterus and bleed to death soon after. Barring that, an infection would almost certainly finish her off. What a beautiful relief that would be. If the unthinkable happened, if her body did manage to hold onto its cursed brood, she would certainly lose her mind. Her sanity would uncouple itself from the rest of the crazy train and go sailing off the rails, flipping end over end down a jagged cliff and landing in a fiery pit.

Fuck all that. Why do you always try to over-complicate things? Take the clothes hanger and open your jugular with it. Die and take the demon freak baby with you.

Nina didn’t want to admit her mother had a point. But did she want to die with that thing inside her? She imagined a tooth-filled, sentient fetus chewing its way out of her womb to save itself, like something out of a scary sci-fi movie, and that looming maw being the last thing she saw as she bled out.

And while she thought these most morbid thoughts, Junior continued to watch her from his nest, no doubt observing his experiment to see if what he’d put in the human test tube would grow. Over time, Nina’s eyes adjusted to the strange bluish light of the room. At certain times of the day, some of the outside light filtered in through the shuttered blinds, and the room grew brighter. She could now see the man-thing living here in his full glory, and she was startled to find herself growing accustomed to the look of him, that strange third eye that rested in the bridge of flesh between the other two, like a pool of oil. She doubted he could see through it. Instead, it was likely just some vestigial opening, the result of a series of genetic misfires that had also given him extra digits and a taste for the deranged.

Nina could easily imagine the upbringing he must have had. The house of horrors this place truly became after the child was born. She’d seen enough horror movies, read enough books in her life to let the gothic drama unfold in her mind. Ramón  had said Mrs. Ballas disappeared while pregnant, but it was likely she died in childbirth. Or maybe she took one look at the freak that slid from her womb and killed herself.

That’s what I would do. What I will do if I haven’t taken care of the problem beforehand. And I will.

She imagined Hank Ballas, stuck with a mutant baby and already a little loony to begin with, secluding himself in this place, raising the infant terror into a boy terror and then eventually into the man terror who would kill him and dress up his corpse—and the butler, don’t forget the butler—like a puppet. Maybe he’d learned his sexual perversions from his old man. Or maybe he’d come up with it all on his own. But how did Kali fit into all this?

Who’s to say, and what did it matter?

The only thing your little mind movies are going to accomplish, dearie, is making you start sympathizing for that freak, like in some twisted Beauty and the Beast fairytale. Before you know it, you’ll be asking corpses to dance and you won’t even need the strings. Then you’ll be begging for that spiked pecker. Then you’ll—

She shoved her mother’s voice away. Not true. Not fucking true. She would never—

—let him suck on your toes again.

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up, you fucking cunt!”

Junior jerked himself upright in his nest like a startled animal, and Nina knew right then she’d actually screamed aloud. She’d been so immersed in her internal dialog she hadn’t even noticed. Oh Jesus, I’m really losing it. He snarled and climbed down, moving with an eerie fluidity reminding her so much of an insect. Her skin crawled.

“No, please,” she murmured, trying to move away as he loomed closer, but not getting very far before the straps pulled tight. “I was just having a bad dream. Please . . .”

“Shhhhh . . .” He reached down with one of his index fingers and glided his long fingernail across her forehead, down her cheek, and across her lips. Drool dripped out of his jagged nightmare smile, landing on her cheek and rolling down like a tear. Her heart fluttered like a trapped and terrified bird as she anticipated those cannibal’s teeth biting off a piece of her as punishment for disturbing his slumber.

But he didn’t do that. Instead, he climbed back up his rope and moved along the web until he reached the enormous empty fireplace. A second later, Nina saw a concealed door open just to the left of the mantel. Some secret passage. Interesting. Nina forgot all about her imminent hysterics and watched intently as Junior went through the door. A white light came on, casting odd elongated shadows on the floor.

She could hear him muttering. Unintelligible grunts at first, and then she heard a voice that made every hair on her body stand on end.

“Who wants to visit Daddy?”

And then another voice, so different, so feminine, Nina might have thought there was a group of people back there if she didn’t know better. “Ooh, pick me. I miss Daddy sooo much! No me! Pick me!”

The effortless change in the tone of his voice made her feel violated somehow. Her body racked with chills. Something on wheels rolled across the floor, and she didn’t need to see in order to know what it was. The dread in her stomach had become such a familiar thing she felt no reaction at all, no real anticipation of her own terror. She might as well have been a kid lying on her back in the middle of a field, watching the clouds float by.

When Junior emerged from the secret room, he was yanking on ropes until finally the cart emerged. In it was another human doll, propped up just like the butler. Only this wasn’t the butler. This one was a woman, with big blue irises and black eyelashes painted on her ping-pong ball eyes. She had long red hair too shiny and smooth to be anything other than a wig. Her skin looked like bleached leather, and her mouth . . . Something was wrong with her mouth. It was frozen in a permanent O of agony, with lips painted blood red.

You know what she looks like . . .

Janie Quick’s eternally amused voice popped up, but Nina didn’t need her to finish the thought. She knew what the mouth reminded her of. It was some morbid version of a blow-up doll, the kind with the mouth primed for a particularly lonely cock. She reminded Nina a little bit of a girl she’d known at the Weeping Willow, not long after Nina was first put to work there. Although the Madam discouraged friendships as much as possible, some of the girls were too amusing to ignore. The girl was named Gina, and everyone used to call her “Gina the Steamcleana.” During dinner, she would brag about how she could swallow any cock, regardless of length. It was her specialty and half the reason this dump even stays open, okay?

The others joked on occasion about their rhyming names. Gina and Nina, Whore Wonder Twins, shit like that. Like most of the interactions that happened between the girls under the Madam’s rule, the laughs and the jokes were always a little forced. They barely concealed the animosity, the competition. It was all about who could pay off their debts and get out of the Willow first. Each girl for herself. Then, a few months after Nina arrived, Gina the Steamcleana was gone. Presumably because her term was up, but no one talked, so who knew? Nina knew where they all went, now. There was no Get Out of Hell Free card.

Nina remembered Gina’s red hair, big blue eyes, and fair skin. She’d reminded her a little of a life-size Raggedy Ann doll. Had she been one of Hank Ballas’s Good Girls? She wasn’t sure if this human doll was Gina or not, but it probably was. Maybe one the Madam sold outright because Gina wasn’t really bringing in a whole lot of profit anyway. Junior probably had every hooker who ever set foot in this house back in that special closet of his, made into a life size doll and ready to pull out and play with like a little kid bringing out his Army men collection.

Because he was a little kid at heart, wasn’t he? He had his puppets and liked to play pretend.

Junior pulled more ropes and Hank Ballas stood up from his usual spot in the wing chair. His stiff limbs moved in concert with Junior’s motions overhead, and the dead body did a funny goosestep over to where the Gina-doll was waiting. His strapped-on dildo of torture jutted before him like the nose on a sawfish. Nina watched the impromptu and bizarre play unfold with a dawning horror.

“Daddy, oh I’ve missed you. Play with me!”

“I don’t know. I hear you have been a very naughty girl,” he said in the booming and authoritative voice he used when he was speaking as his father.

Junior tugged on the ropes attached to Gina’s head, making the corpse mimic a shaky denial. “No, Daddy. I’ve been good. I promise.”

“I heard you say dirty words. Daddy doesn’t like his Good Girls to say dirty words. Not at all.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy. It was an accident.”

It was strange how the inflections seemed to add new expression to faces frozen in place. Gina now looked afraid. Nina supposed she had been when she died. Or maybe she’d been too catatonic to care. That would have been a mercy.

“That may be, but I am going to have to clean that dirt right out of your bad little mouth.” The Ballas puppet loomed closer, and Junior jiggled the ropes holding Gina, making her quiver in fear.

“I won’t say any more bad words. I swear. Please don’t hurt me. I’ll be a Good Girl. The best Good Girl you ever saw!”

“Don’t move, little one. Daddy’s going to teach you a lesson.”

Nina closed her eyes. She couldn’t watch anymore. The moral of the story was apparent enough. Unfortunately, she was unable to cover her ears. The muffled girlish screams filling the room as Junior made his father-puppet skullfuck the long dead hooker would stay with Nina for a very long time.

That’ll be me soon enough, she thought. Janie Quick, for once, had nothing to say.

***

After Junior finished playing with his toys, he put them away and left the room for a while. Kali came in later with lunch and undid the straps so she could help Nina sit up. Her ass was numb, the muscles of her arms and legs weak and floppy. No amount of turning and bed calisthenics could hold back the wasting away of her body. A pregnancy would only make things worse as the fetus sucked the rest of her dry in order to sustain itself, but Nina didn’t think they were too concerned about that. Maybe, when her belly was nice and ripe, they would just cut the kid out of her without pain meds, and she’d die—gratefully—in a pool of blood, hopefully before she ever saw the abomination living inside her.

There wasn’t much food on the tray, and what there was didn’t look good. There were spots of mold on the sandwich bread, and the meat inside had a matching greenish hue. The soup was cold and smelled distinctly of piss. Nina pushed it aside.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You have to eat it,” Kali said, her voice firm. “There will be a reward if you do. There will be punishment if you don’t.”

“Punishment? I’m strapped to a bed twenty-three hours a day.”

Kali gave a single nod. “That could change. If you take your lesson.”

“What lesson is there in eating rotten food? What about this baby I’m supposedly carrying. You want me to poison it?”

“The child will be fine. In fact, I think if you believed it wouldn’t be, you would be shoveling in bites by the handful.”

Touché.

“You must learn a lesson in purity. When you speak ugly words, you become an impure vessel. And when you carry his child, you will not be impure. He expects nothing less than a perfect spawn.”

Nina gaped at the woman. “Um, hello? Aren’t you a medical professional? Tell him a baby doesn’t become a mutated freak because its mother says ‘fuck.’”

Kali’s arm flew out, and Nina felt the open palm strike her cheek with a flat crack. “You will shut your mouth.”

“Fuck this. Fuck your superstitions. Fuck this filthy house and your fucking freak rituals. Fuck you!”

The woman’s hands were around her throat before Nina even saw her move. She squeezed, and Nina’s air narrowed to about the width of a coffee straw. Good. “Go . . . ahead. Kill. Me.”

Kali’s grin was reptile cold. “Oh, I won’t kill you. Quite the contrary. I’ll bring you close enough to make you think you’re free, and then I’ll bring you back. I will hurt you. I will purify you myself with pain and fire.”

Nina didn’t want to believe her, but she knew it was true. They would never kill her, but they would make her wish for it a million times over. Oh just eat the goddamn food, you baby. It can’t be worse than some of the filthy cocks you’ve had in your mouth.

“Are you ready to be reasonable?” Kali asked.

Nina nodded, and the woman’s hands fell away. She placed the tray on Nina’s lap and gestured to the spoiled food. “Now eat. And as you do, think of how the impurity tastes in your mouth.”

Nina picked up the sandwich. She refused to look at it. Just closed her eyes and took a bite. The meat squished between her teeth, filling her mouth with a rotten egg flavor that her stomach clamped closed against. I can’t swallow this. No way in hell.

Those words had flown through her mind on more than one occasion, usually when she had her head buried in some guy’s crotch, his hands gripping her head, keeping it in place for the imminent glut of hot stew he would fill her mouth with. She remembered thinking that this would be the time her stomach would revolt, she would vomit all over a client’s shriveling knob, after which the Madam would come in and cut out her tongue or rip out her teeth. But it never happened. Her body had not turned traitor.

And it would not now, even as she finished the last bite of the sandwich and gulped down the stinking congealed soup. She just thought of the Madam, who still had the power to enforce total obedience even from a hundred miles away. Nina wondered what the Madam thought of all this, if she knew the extent of Junior’s plans. It had to be putting a serious hurting in her business, not being able to send more girls up here for the fat half-mill. Good. She hoped the bitch was broke and desperate. She hoped Victor Cassini had put the sadistic hag out of her misery.

Nina dropped the empty bowl on the tray and took the glass of water Kali handed her. At least it didn’t taste contaminated. She drank it down with gratitude, washing away the fetid taste that had been bad, but not quite as bad as she imagined it would be. Her stomach, cowed into submission, didn’t stir. At least for now.

“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Kali asked as she took the tray with a look of triumph pasted across her dark features. Nina wanted to claw it off.

“What’s my reward?”

“You’re so impatient. Wait a moment.” She reached into the pocket of her robes and took out a small silver key, which she used to unlock the rest of the straps around Nina’s legs and feet. When she finished, Nina was sitting on the bed completely unrestrained.

“That’s my reward? You’re going to untie me?” She tried to contain her excitement by reminding herself there had to be a catch to this whole thing.

“That is one of your rewards, yes. We feel that in order for you to properly nourish the child, you must have more use of the room and facilities. I’ve been instructed to bring you whatever you like. If you like to read, I can bring in a selection of books. We can arrange for the limited use of the television. I can bring you paints and canvasses if you would prefer to do some artwork.”

Nina’s mind was spinning. She didn’t know what to say to any of this. The story of Rumpelstiltskin briefly popped into her head, but she pushed it away. It felt too damn good to have these straps off her legs. The rest of it, she would have to think that over later. “Can . . . can I stand up?”

Kali held out her hands. “Be careful. You haven’t walked in a month. You may be a little unsteady on your feet.”

She swung her legs over and planted her feet on the floor. The pain between her legs was little more than a series of minor twinges, her wounds nearly healed even though they still felt like a strange mass of burgeoning scars between her legs. Using Kali’s hands for support, she pushed herself up to her feet. Her legs felt a little wobbly, but she was otherwise okay. Kali bent down and picked up the catheter bag so she could bring it along.

“I think you will be able to go without this very soon as well.”

“But . . . what’s the catch to all this? Why should I believe he’s going to just let me roam freely around here?”

“We didn’t say roam freely. You will be restricted to this room, and I will escort you to the bathroom so you may use the toilet and take your baths, all of which will be supervised. But he believes you are on your way to being reborn, and that you have come to accept your duty here, whether you consciously believe it or not.”

“What do you believe?” Nina asked.

“I believe you are willful and deceptive. You do not have my trust. I tried to dissuade him from allowing these things, as I believe it will only make my job harder and more dangerous. I believe if given the chance, you would kill me.”

“If the tables were turned, wouldn’t you do the same?”

Kali didn’t answer, but her response was clear enough. There was no sisterhood moment happening here, but there was a base understanding about the wages of human survival. The Indian woman’s proclamation was correct. If she could, right now in fact, she’d drive a stake through Kali’s head and then jump through the nearest window. But she wasn’t going to attempt such a thing until she was completely certain of her success.

Right now, she just wanted to enjoy her newfound freedom, as limited as it was. After over a month of being tied to a filthy bed, she thought she’d earned that much. She would bide her time for now. Explore the space a little bit, see what was possible. See what was in the secret room next to the fireplace. Maybe she would find something in there to help her get out of here. Maybe she would actually survive this thing. It was amazing how being out of physical agony and standing on your own two feet could infuse someone with the will to live.

“Can I look outside?” she asked Kali. The woman hesitated for a few seconds and then nodded. “Okay, I will allow it. Even though there are bars on the windows, I will keep hold of your arm.”

Nina had forgotten about the bars. So much for breaking out through a window, she thought. “Fair enough.”

The two women walked over to the nearest window, the one on the same side of the room as the bed. Nina stood before it, as anxious and giddy as a kid staring at a big, brightly-wrapped present under the Christmas tree. “May I pull back the curtain?” she asked.

“Be my guest.”

The thick and heavy velvet fabric puffed out a cloud of dust when Nina touched it. She parted the curtain down the middle, revealing blinds covered in a layer of dust so thick it looked like fur. The sunshine coming through the slats, however, was blinding. Especially after so many weeks in this dimly lit cave.

Once her eyes began to adjust, she pulled the cord on the blinds and peered through the grimy glass and the wrought iron bars to see a dead and forlorn fall landscape. The dead trees looked even deader than before. The stagnant fountain in the circular driveway looked much the same as it had when she first arrived here, only now it was choked full of dead leaves. She remembered the strange albino possum Ramón had almost hit, how it stopped and seemed to challenge them. It had been a terrible omen, one she wished she would have heeded, and might have if not for the promise of money and freedom.

She could have stared at the yard for hours, if only to take in the natural light, the organic ugliness made beautiful purely from her dramatic shift in perspective. She wanted to go out there and feel the crunch of the dirt, leaves, and grass under her feet while sucking in enormous gluts of fresh air. Maybe they would allow it after a time. After all, it would be good for the baby.

Her thought was cut off clean by the gleam of sun off metal in the distance, not far from the end of the lane that emptied into the circular drive. She squinted and finally the shape of the black sedan became very clear through the trees. It was just sitting there. She might have missed it if she’d turned away a second sooner.

It’s Ramón. Ramón’s come back!

But wait . . . No, that wasn’t the right car. Joey had been a gearhead, so she knew cars about as well as she knew her Scorsese. This was a Cadillac, and all of the Madam’s cars had been Lincolns. Maybe it was Junior’s car. Maybe it was Kali’s. It was a strange place to park, if so. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she could see the silhouette of someone behind the wheel. Nina did everything in her power to conceal her surprise and excitement. She wanted to start pounding on the glass, scream for help, but that would only make things worse for her, especially if the car was one of theirs. Besides, they were too far away to hear her screams.

Best to just remain quiet. Don’t let on what you’ve seen. If someone is scoping out the place, then that could be good for you. Just don’t get your hopes up. What if it’s the Madam?

Nina’s skin prickled with goosebumps. She didn’t see how that could be good news for her. Out of the fryer, back into the frying pan. But maybe in this case, the witch could become her ally.

“Have you seen enough?” Kali said.

Nina let the curtain fall back in a dusty swish of fabric. “Yeah. I’m good, for now.”

Chapter 14

The Ballad of Jenkins

Jenkins sat outside the Weeping Willow Shelter for Women two days before Halloween, watching dead leaves dance and swirl across the street and wondering if this was worth the hundred and fifty bucks a horrible woman from Des Moines, Iowa was paying him to check up on her likely horrible daughter. If it had been any other month than October, he would have turned it down, but his business was always slow in October, and he was already a month behind on child support. The money wouldn’t make his ex completely shut her yap, but it would fill in a little bit of the widening hole.

Anyone within a five hundred mile radius of the Willow thought this place might be a Cassini whorehouse. Anyone within a fifty mile radius knew for sure it was. Jenkins just happened to live five miles away. He’d never visited, of course. Back when he was on the force, he did what everyone else did. He took the money and shut up. Jenkins wasn’t a white knight. He needed the paycheck. The human trafficking bust would have to go to some bright-eyed golden boy who didn’t care about becoming the biggest pariah in the NYPD. But in his tenure, no one had stepped up to the plate. Since the owner of the establishment paid her taxes and had all the right permits filed with the city, there wasn’t anything they could bust her on. Nothing that could get them a warrant. She was as untouchable as Victor Cassini himself. Rumor had it they were brother and sister, even though the man was old enough to be her father. And there were other rumors too—the sick kind—from the people who knew Dante Cassini back when the Family still had an upstanding reputation in the community. That maybe Victor was Contessa’s father and that the whole thing had been “kept in the family.”

Jenkins didn’t know about any of that. Didn’t really care. The last thing he wanted was to start poking the most infamous hornet’s nest on the eastern seaboard with a stick, or even a tiny little twig like he had here. But there was this horrible woman from Des Moines to contend with. Janie Quick. The name reminded Jenkins of the name of some Old West outlaw, and he had a feeling Quick knew that as well. When she first called him two days ago, she couldn’t even give him the name of the place she thought her daughter might be.

“She’s turnin’ tricks somewhere out there. Not sure where, though. Said she’d fallen into trouble with some Eye-talians and was trying to pay back some money she owed. But she was about finished with that and was gonna come home real soon. I went down to the diner where I work and made sure I could get her on with me, startin’ on the night shift. That was near two months ago, and Bernie’s about this close to sayin’ forget about it. He’ll hire someone who actually needs the damn job.”

Italians, debt, turning tricks. The most obvious place to look was the Weeping Willow. Jenkins told Janie to send her a picture of the girl and any other information she could provide in an email, to which she promptly told him she didn’t spend no time with her damn head stuck in a ’puter box, so she’d have to make a trip to the libarry in the morning.

A born and bred New Yorker, Jenkins could only take so much quaint language before he started to get a headache. “That sounds good, Missus Quick.”

“That’s Mizz to you, sonny. I ain’t been a Missus since you was in short britches.”

He clamped down on the sarcastic remark wanting to fly from his lips and instead just said, “Sorry, Miss Quick.”

“Now how much is this all gonna cost me? All I need you to do is track her down and give her a damn message. I don’t much care if she comes back here or not, but if she’s gonna, I need to know when so I can tell Bernie to hold that slot open one more week or so. After that, she’s on her own.”

Jenkins squeezed the bridge of his nose in anticipation of the inevitable shit storm to come. Folks like Janie Quick didn’t like parting with their money even under the best of circumstances, and this was sure to make the sour bitch even more sour.

“My standard fee for this sort of thing usually runs about five hundred. This covers gas and travel expenses, paperwork and mailing expenses, surveillance time, research, film or computer paper, and any other incidentals. However, since it doesn’t appear you want pictures and I have a pretty good idea where she might be, I can bump that down to three hundred.”

Truth was, he could have bumped it down to even half that. If the girl was up at the Willow, it would take him twenty minutes to run up there and knock on the door and tell the girl to call her goddamn mother, and he could even get it done before breakfast. But Jenkins always liked to leave a little wiggle room in opening negotiations, and if the girl wasn’t there, if this turned into an actual hunt—one which often started and ended in one of the city’s morgues—he wouldn’t have to come back to the bargaining table asking for more money.

“Three hundred dollars for you to take a damn note to a whore at a whorehouse? You have got to be jokin’. I could fly out there right now for that price.”

So why don’t you, you miserable hag?

“Look, Miss Quick, if your daughter isn’t where I think she is and I have to do a little more detective work, then you can be rest assured your fee will cover it. And, chances are if you haven’t heard from her since you last spoke, I’m going to have to look into things a little more. She may have run into trouble in transit to Des Moines, for all we know. I can look into all of that for you.”

Chances are the girl changed her mind about coming home. And I can’t really blame her. Five minutes on the phone with you, and I’m already thinking of relocating my office to Kabul.

“You gotta understand somethin’ here. I’m on disability. I don’t got a lot of money.”

Jenkins wanted to ask how she was working and getting disability at the same time, but he’d tracked down enough deadbeat dads for welfare moms to know that story. She was likely working at the diner for cents under the table so she’d have enough money to pay for her weekly case of Natty Light. On more than one occasion, he’d been offered foodstamps as payment. But the fact was he needed the money too. This was the first business call he’d taken in over a week.

“You can pay me half upfront and half at the end, if that helps.” He wiped away the second hundred fifty in his mind. He’d never see it. That was the nature of a business like this, and it was even more the nature of people like Janie Quick. The horrible woman acquiesced and the next morning, Jenkins received an email with an attached picture and another note that read:

Now this picher is a few years old. Only had one from her senior year in high school, and we wasn’t camera folks, anyway. But if she hasn’t been hittin a crank pipe for the last few years, she ought to still look bout the same. Her name’s Nina Ann Quick. Five-six or seven, a buck thirty, brown hair, blue eyes. She’s got a little mole on her temple, if that makes any difference. I express mailed your money order this mornin.

That was it. Nothing about “please let me know as soon as you find my daughter.” Or, “please tell her I love her and want her to come home.” Jenkins felt like he was searching for the emotional equivalent of a missing sock, and he didn’t think he was doing Nina Ann Quick any favors.

The girl’s picture was old and probably useless, especially if she’d been all the way out here for the last few years selling skin and who knows what else, but she was beautiful. The picture showed a well-tanned young woman sitting on a porch swing with a little white dog in her lap, smiling like a kid who had a smartass joke ready to come out of her mouth. Jenkins saw a kid who looked like she thought she was too good to be where she was, and given his recent interactions with the girl’s mother, he thought maybe she’d been on to something. How the hell did she get herself mixed up in the Cassini debtor’s prison, though? She was smart, but not smart enough, apparently.

He waited outside the Willow to see if he could catch the girl coming or going. A few women did walk down the street and enter the premises with men on their arms—a clever way to disguise johns as dates—but he wasn’t here on a prostitution sting. His sting days were long gone. Police work had never really been his cup of tea. His old sergeant used to say Jenkins had a problem with moral relativity; he was missing the moral part.

Time to go and earn your hundred fifty, Detective.

Jenkins groaned and stepped out of his Taurus. A gust of wind pushed at his back, like an invisible hand urging him toward the enormous Brownstone, the only place on the whole block without a pumpkin on the stoop or some sort of tacky witch or black cat decoration hanging on the door. He crossed the autumn-silent street and climbed the steps. A bad feeling was stirring around in his stomach. He wanted to turn around, climb back into his car with the bad tires and squealing serpentine belt and go back to his office, call the horrible woman from Des Moines, tell her the girl wasn’t there. Maybe he’d say she moved to Canada and then tell her to keep the check. There would be a better job along soon. There was always a better job.

Yeah, good call, Captain Courage. Maybe on the way home, you can stop and pet some bunnies and get yourself a box of tampons for your brand new vagina.

He sighed and pressed the button on the little intercom.

A few seconds later, a little click and then a woman’s voice. “Hello?”

“Hi, my name is Chris Jenkins. I’m a private investigator. I would like to speak with the proprietor.”

A long pause and then, “Okay. Just a minute.”

Jenkins put his hands in his pockets and waited. He looked up and saw a small surveillance camera mounted next to the porch light. Unsurprising but still unsettling. What must have been about five minutes later, the door opened to reveal a young blonde woman in a pair of jeans and one of those off-the-shoulder sweatshirts regurgitated by the movie Flashdance. He didn’t notice a bra strap. The girl was maybe twenty, if Jenkins was feeling generous, and looking at her tits made him feel like a dirty old man. He pulled his eyes away.

“Can I help you, Mister?” she asked.

“I guess you’re not the proprietor?”

She shook her head with a grin. “Nope. She’s been out a lot lately. Car accident.”

Jenkins had a feeling that wasn’t true, but he wasn’t here to cross-examine a high-school dropout trying to fuck for a buck. “That’s unfortunate. Look, I don’t really need to speak with her, anyway. I’m here for one of the, uh, tenants.” He showed the girl the picture. “Her name is Nina Quick. Have you seen her?”

The girl’s eyes went wide and glassy and Jenkins knew he had something. If they’d been looking for someone to tell a lie, they sent the wrong girl to the door. “I, uh . . . No, I can’t say I have. I haven’t been here all that long.”

“Well, surely there’s someone here who could help me out. This girl’s mother is very worried, you understand? She doesn’t want to involve the cops, but if I can’t find the girl’s information, I might have no choice.”

“So you’re not a cop?”

“Nope. Just a private dick. Frankly, I’d rather not deal with any police on this matter. I’m trying to make it a light morning for myself.”

“Look, I can’t let you in. The girls here have to be protected, and they don’t take kindly to seeing strange men at the door.”

She was playing the women’s shelter card. He wasn’t going argue with her. “Yeah, I bet.” He pulled a little notepad and a pen out of his jacket pocket. “Can you give me a number where I can reach the woman of the house at another time?”

The girl looked at him with her glassy eyes. She was afraid. Jenkins wasn’t sure if she was afraid of him or something else, but if he had to put his money on it, he would say there was a knife against her back. Figuratively, anyway. Finally, she said, “Give me your pen. I’ll write it for you.”

He handed her the pad and pen and she jotted something down. “Here you go. Thanks for understanding. Sorry I couldn’t help more.”

Jenkins was staring at the door again before another word could leave his mouth. He walked down the porch steps, reading the note on the way. However, there was no phone number here. In a shaky hand was the following: Meet me at the coffee shop 2 blocks up. 20 min.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Jenkins muttered. He walked back to his Taurus.

***

The girl hadn’t said which coffee shop, but Brews Brothers Espresso was the only place within two blocks, and Jenkins decided that had to be it. He parked the car across the street and waited out the next twenty minutes, per the girl’s instructions. He felt a little nervous about all the secrecy, and the fear in the girl’s eyes. The Willow was holding a lot more secrets than the obvious one, and he wished he wasn’t so damn curious. In fact, he thought it would still be a good idea to forget this whole thing and leave, but he’d already ventured into the fun house. The only option now was to just go through it and come out on the other side where hopefully daylight would be waiting.

The girl emerged from the alley next to the building just as Jenkins was crossing the street. A black peacoat had replaced the Flashdance sweatshirt, and she wore a gray beanie cap over her bleached hair. Their eyes briefly met, and he jogged to catch up with her as she kept walking.

“Don’t act like you know me,” she muttered over her shoulder. “Just keep walking and get in line behind me.”

Jenkins, who was no stranger to undercover operations from his days on the force, nodded and fell into line a few steps behind her without missing a beat. The café was packed with commuters and students this time of morning. They would be waiting awhile, but that was to their advantage.

“We’ll talk here and go our separate ways after we get our coffees,” she said, barely moving her lips as she looked at the floor. “I’ll probably get in trouble for leaving the house without permission, but when you mentioned Nina’s mom, I guess had to do something.”

“Why is that?”

She glanced up at him with an annoyed frown. “I had a mother once.”

“Oh. Well, what do you know?”

“Maybe you should tell me what you know first,” she said. “About the Willow.”

“I know what it really is. Well, mostly.”

“And you’re not a cop?”

“Like I told you, no. Not anymore. I hunt down deadbeat dads and cheating husbands most days. Sometimes I get worried mothers who want to know what happened to their daughters, but not very often.”

She sighed. “Okay. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.”

“You have nothing to worry about from me. I just want to know where Nina is.”

She casually gazed at the menu. According to the artful script on the slate board before them, cranberry scones and pumpkin lattes were on special. Fall favorites. Espresso machines hissed out steam and hot milk while people rattled off their multi-syllabic orders in the pretentious java-yuppie lingo that always drove him a little nuts. Right now, Jenkins felt like he was in a bubble of intrigue and danger, looking out into a world full of mundane people and things. It was the one thing about police work that used to excite him.

“I don’t know a lot about her. We didn’t talk much. None of the girls at the Willow do. We’re not really allowed to. But eventually, most of the girls get sent somewhere.”

Jenkins frowned, but tried to maintain an unaffected stance. To anyone watching, he might have been trying to decide between the soy mocha java no-whip and the non-fat sugar-free double-shot Americano with extra tongue-lashings from his black Folgers soul.

“Where do they go?”

“There’s a special client upstate. He pays a lot of money to mess the girls up really bad. When they come back, they don’t work again. They’re done. Eventually, they’re just gone altogether. No one ever says where or why, but we all pretty much assume that they’ve . . . you know.” She drew a subtle finger across her throat. She might have just been scratching an itch, but Jenkins saw the intent loud and clear.

It was her turn to order, and she stepped up to the counter and asked for an almond caramel something or other. Jenkins snapped out of his thoughts and ordered the Americano and paid for both.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said as they stepped aside to wait. “But, thanks.”

“As long as it doesn’t get you in trouble.”

She just shrugged as if to say, “One way or another, I’m probably fucked.”

“Who’s this client?” he asked.

“Some old rich guy named Hank Ballas.”

Something stirred in Jenkins’ head. He’d heard that name before, but he wasn’t sure where. “So they go to this Ballas character, and they come back messed up.”

“To say the least. They’re like the walking dead, except they can barely walk. Mostly they just stay in their rooms all day. Some of the others whisper about it, but no one ever asks questions. I think everyone knows that when you go up to the Ballas place, you’re done for. Apparently, Nina got her ticket up there a couple months back. I haven’t seen her since. She didn’t even come back for a little while, like most of the other girls do. She was just gone. Maybe she escaped, but I doubt it.”

“Why do you doubt it?”

“Because they would have found her and brought her back here by now. Cassinis always get what they want.”

Jenkins swallowed. He felt a little sick to his stomach. No wonder the girl looked afraid. The secret of the Weeping Willow was much darker than he imagined. And that name, Ballas, nagged at him more than ever now.

The guy behind the counter called out their orders. “Anything else you can tell me?” he asked.

“Yeah. Don’t get involved in this thing. The Cassinis . . . I’ve seen and felt what they can do. It’s more than just the Ballas thing or the Weeping Willow. I’m sure you know that, having been a cop once and all.”

That he did, but he had a feeling she knew a lot more than he did. “Why don’t you try and run for it”

She gave him a sad grin. “There’s nowhere else for girls like us to go.” Her eyes strictly forbade him from prying any further. Let it go, okay? This isn’t about me.

“You think you’ll go up to see Ballas eventually?”

She shrugged. “My number will come up, I’m sure. But when it does, I’ll be ready. Some of the girls get pills from their clients. They’d be dead if the Madam ever found out. She inspects the rooms regularly. Or did before her accident. Anyway, I’ll swallow a handful of them and sleep forever before I ever go up there.”

“Jesus . . .” He didn’t have any more words in him. His stomach felt like it had been on the receiving end of a steel-toed boot.

“Hey, don’t let it get you down. It’s better than being locked in the pen, which is where most of us would be right now if it wasn’t for the Willow. If you ever want to visit me, just come up to the door and ask for Kelly. I’ll give you a great time.”

Jenkins, who had no intention of procuring any such services, put on his most winning smile. “I may just do that.”

She turned and left the shop. He watched her blow into her coffee lid as she walked back toward the prison with no bars and unlimited conjugal visits. He counted to sixty before making his exit, crossing the street to where his car sat ticking away its last couple minutes on the meter. By the time he was behind the wheel, he set aside the five dollar cup of coffee he didn’t want and looked in the rearview mirror. Kelly was long gone.

***

Back at his office, he typed Hank Ballas into the search engine and started sifting through the pages of results. There wasn’t a whole lot of compelling information, but he was at least able to figure out where he’d heard the name before. Lady Ballas, the man’s wife, up and vanished about three weeks before she was supposed to give birth to their first child. A huge search went under way, but the woman never turned up. Some quietly suspected Ballas, but no one could prove anything without a body, and the case eventually turned cold. He was an oilman originally, but had later branched out into computer chips and other tech companies. Sometime in the late eighties, following the disappearance of Lady, he just dropped off the map entirely. No more public appearances. He’d sold off all his stock and cashed in his pension and holed up in his estate up north. By now, he would be well into his eighties.

Jenkins had a difficult time imagining someone that old being a sexual deviant, especially the type who was capable of doing the things Kelly hinted at. Maybe there was someone else living up there off his fortune. There were stories that popped up from time to time about people who acted as caretakers for the elderly, but were really murdering scam artists that offed the clients and lived in their houses, collecting their social security and pension checks for a little while before moving on. He looked up county tax records and found everything still up to date and copasetic on the man’s property. No death certificates had been filed.

Jenkins supposed it was acceptable enough for someone to just withdraw completely from society and become a hermit if they were rich enough. Howard Hughes had done it, and he wasn’t the only one. But it was just damn odd. If he was killing prostitutes, or fucking them up to within an inch of their lives, this went beyond a simple transaction between two consenting adults. Someone else needed to look into this, like the cops. He still had a couple good contacts back at his old precinct. The kind who weren’t too deep in the Cassini billfold. Maybe they could make some calls upstate, and then he could wash his hands of this whole matter and tell the horrible woman in Des Moines that her daughter’s fate rested in the hands of New York’s finest.

But not yet. He wouldn’t kick that hornet’s nest until he had a damn good reason. Right now, the matter of Nina Quick was still that of a grown woman who may have just skipped town because she didn’t want to go home to her bitch mother. Furthermore, he didn’t have an ounce of real proof on any of Kelly’s claims, and she would make a terrible witness. But if he took a drive up there and poked around, maybe found something suspicious, like a girl tied to a bed, then he’d have something to take to the police.

Not too late to let this go, you know. You could just fuck the whole thing and go pick up your kid for a surprise visit. Pretty sure the wife wouldn’t throw up too much of a stink about it not being one of your designated days. Maybe you can use your new pocket change to buy him an ice cream at his favorite place uptown that mixes custom flavors with fresh cream and freezes it with liquid nitrogen right in front of the customers.

Those were warm thoughts, welcoming thoughts. Safe ones. But they wouldn’t pay the bills, and ice cream didn’t equal child support.

The drive up was quiet and almost relaxing once he was out of the city. Most of the brilliant foliage had fallen by now, but there was still enough to dot the landscape with occasional bits of orange and yellow. An hour and a half later, he was pulling into the Ballas driveway. There was a gate, but it was rusted and covered in dead vines. It was also standing open, and it looked like it had been for quite some time, given the drifts of leaves settled against it.

He weighed his options one last time before driving through. Hell, he wouldn’t even have to get out of the car if he didn’t want to. At the very least, he could just say he was lost if anyone saw him.

It was darker back here, though he couldn’t say why. The late October sun was being generous enough, and the lack of leaves on the trees shouldn’t have occluded any of the light, but it was dismal nonetheless. Maybe it was the mood of the place creeping into his heart. There was nothing even remotely pretty or lifelike about the place. The tree trunks were so lifeless they looked petrified. Tufts of yellow and brown decayed weeds stood between packed dirt wheel ruts. Even in the late fall, when everything was going to sleep for the winter and had the excuse of being less than pastoral, this place just felt . . . dead.

Jenkins crested a small hill and saw the Ballas house for the first time. His heart lunged into his throat and he hit the brakes.

“Christ almighty,” he whispered. No way could anyone live in there. The tile roof was in shambles, the stucco was cracked. Graffiti marred everything, undoubtedly left by the junkies and transients who probably slept there among the rats and pissed in the corners.

Just how many junkie transients do you think there are this far out in the middle of nowhere? He pushed the question away. It didn’t matter. If Hank Ballas still lived here, he was a complete madman, and that was all he needed to know to get the cops involved. He’d just circle around this swampy old fountain, get the hell out of here, and call Holmes at the precinct. Done and done.

But then he saw the face peeking at him from one of the lower level windows and stomped the brakes again. When he looked closer, he didn’t see anything. Just a black curtain behind wrought iron bars and dirty glass, but he was sure it had been there only a moment ago. A pale and emaciated face framed with black hair.

You’re only seeing what you want to see.

Bullshit. He didn’t want to see anything. He wanted to put about a hundred miles between himself and this place yesterday. Nonetheless, he’d seen the girl there, and she looked a lot like the one in the picture riding in his breast pocket.

This is where you stop your bullshitting, get on your phone and call the goddamn cops. You’re not a hero anymore, and you really weren’t even one when you had a badge. No sense in starting now, especially for a hundred and fifty bucks.

He checked his phone. No signal. Naturally. He put the Taurus in park and shut it off and got out, feeling every bit as much the horror movie idiot everyone in the theater would be rooting for to die because he was so stupid. He should be backing his ass out of here, driving until he had a signal, and then calling the police.

But what if Ballas, or whoever had her in there, was torturing her right now? Punishing her for peeking out the window and alerting the visitor to her presence? She could be suffering right now because of him. By the time someone made it all the way out here, Nina Quick would be so much ground meat on a dilapidated floor.

A high-pitched scream erupted inside the house. “Help me! Help me please oh please help me!”

Jenkins dropped all pussyfooted notions of leaving and calling the cops. He dashed up the porch steps in a single bound and turned the old brass knob on the enormous double doors. Amazingly, it wasn’t locked, and he stumbled into a house smelling of old dirt and piss and moldy towels. It was dark, but well-lit enough to display the piles of junk, the filth, the enormous stretches of spider webs strung all across the ceiling.

That doesn’t look like web, exactly. What is it?

He ran in the direction of the screams, his feet stomping on ancient and filthy tiles, doing his best to ignore the strange insignias in red paint (or blood), and the skeletons of small animals nailed to the walls. And he heard wheels rolling behind him. A skateboard or something, a gliding roar echoing off the cavernous walls, accompanied by a mad cackle turning his blood to ice. But he refused to look behind him. To do so would send him over the cliff to Gonzo City for good. He just ran faster, praying to whoever was listening he wouldn’t slip and fall.

Finally, he reached the door and pushed his way through. The screaming stopped, and he came face to face not with the girl from the picture but a twisted old hag, frail and filthy in a flimsy old baby doll gown. But it’s her! See the mole her mother told you about?

His shock did battle with the more logical part of his brain for a few seconds until finally, yes, he could see this trembling waif was in fact Nina Quick, and that someone had ruined her. Her hair hung in her face in great, sweaty gobs. Her cheekbones stood out in sharp relief, the flesh below looking shriveled and deflated like old balloons. Jenkins thought of those old black and white photos of emaciated concentration camp victims, and she was well on the way to being just like them, if she lived that long. Dried blood streaked her quivering thighs and she had deep red ligature marks going up and down her arms.

She swayed like a fighter on the ropes.

“Nina? Nina Quick?”

“I’m sorry,” she said in a trembling, rasping voice. “They made me do it.”

Jenkins realized it wasn’t a tremble of fear in the girl’s voice. It was a laugh. A strange little titter. There was madness in it. He felt his bowels cramp. “Who?”

“Daddy’s very angry with you,” she said, and Jenkins heard a shrieking laugh from behind him. Or was it above him? Don’t turn around. Don’t be like that woman in the Bible who looked back and turned into a pillar of salt. But turn around, he did. And he saw a woman in red and a thing hanging over her shoulder. A human-sized spider.

Jenkins’ last real thought, before the screaming began, was that his son would never get that ice cream.

Chapter 15

Ramón and the Honey Trap

In bed, they made a pile of sweat-covered exhaustion. Ramón lay against Jessie’s bare breasts, letting her run her hands all over his bald head, as if she could drink in every drop of him through her pores.

“This isn’t getting old yet, is it?” she asked. “Fuck if it isn’t getting better.”

He agreed with a long kiss before rolling over onto the springy mattress with a satisfied groan. “I won’t be able to move after this.”

“I’ll make sure to rub you down with Ben-Gay later, old man.”  She got up to shower while he lay in bed gazing at the ceiling, wondering what the hell he was going to do now.

He told himself, before that first lunch date with Jessie, he was going to leave town the next day and just head south, try his luck elsewhere without the Madam lurking a couple blocks away. No way was he going to let himself get mired down here, or anywhere, with a girl practically young enough to be his kid. But when a simple boardwalk lunch gave way to dinner, which then gave way to nearly a full night of the best sex he could ever remember having, things changed. And when she woke up beside him late the following morning, the second date became nearly a clone of the first. After that, all the days blurred into one sweaty exertion after another, all of which were leading him inexorably closer to his doom. She did continue going to work, but when she was gone, he paced his room in a constant debate with himself. Should he stay a little longer? One more night? Or should he just take the money and leave? He attempted a few letters to her on the room stationary, but when four consecutive drafts all came out sounding like the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech, he gave up. Expressing himself in writing just wasn’t his strong suit. If he couldn’t find the courage to tell her the truth face to face, he would be better off just leaving without a word.  And it was usually around the time he would come to a decision to dig the black suitcase from under his bed and go that she was unlocking the room door with the spare keycard he had given her. Five minutes later, the whole cycle would rinse and repeat.

Their conversation between rounds in the sack was easy and constant, but he’d managed so far to avoid revealing much about himself. She seemed content with him remaining mysterious and somewhat aloof, and he was content with obliging her. Jessie, however, was an open book about all the ups and downs of her life, as if the one thing she’d really been seeking was someone to hear all her problems instead of the way things usually went at her job as the priestess in the booze-filled confessional. She did have a kid. He’d guessed right about that. But the boy’s father had full custody and they lived in Connecticut so she only saw him maybe four times a year. Holidays, mostly.

“He’s nine, and he hates me. It’s what I deserve,” she told him on the third night, followed by a long one-sided discussion about how her ex, a lawyer, had managed to win everything in the divorce, leaving her penniless and without even hope for an alimony payment. “All the money was on his side, and I was stupid. I didn’t think he would actually try to screw me, but I learned eventually if someone can screw you, they will. I had to move in with my sick grandfather here to avoid being homeless. He was all I had after six years of being a stay-at-home mom. A shut-in with no friends. I couldn’t have Noah living in this rat hole, so I didn’t fight for custody. I send money when I can. Clothes, video games, the latest and greatest in Nerf guns. I guess he likes it. I never hear one way or another.” They were eating cold Chinese carryout on his bed, naked and voraciously hungry after three straight hours of lovemaking. She spoke of the tragedy of losing her son’s love as a simple fact, the way one discusses the weather, but Ramón could sense something volatile and malleable just beneath the surface. He was careful not to tap into it, as much as she apparently wanted him to. Over the last two weeks, he’d come to see Jessie as a bucket of tears and rage looking for a shoulder, and that was the last thing he wanted to be. Becoming that shoulder would make her more than just a fuck partner, a quick distraction on his way to the open road. So he just decided to listen quietly and nod in all the right places and wait for her to warm up again or decide to fall asleep. Mostly it was the former. Sex became a mutual exercise in lust and spleen venting.

He couldn’t remember a time in his life when the act felt almost addictive or when the woman, at least a woman who wasn’t demanding payment for services rendered, wanted it more than he did. Jessie wasn’t satisfied unless it was hard and fast. She wanted pain. He left bruises and bite marks on her breasts and inner-thighs, not because that was his intent, but because she wanted him to. Begged for it. And it awakened that old brutish anger of his, a machismo long buried after years of living broken and in servitude. It was hard to leave that behind, as was saying goodbye to such an enthusiastic partner. Maria hadn’t been, and so Ramón had to take his libido elsewhere, usually to the card tables and to the whores lingering around them for good luck.

But finding a great lay was not good enough reason to remain here. If the Madam or one of the other Cassinis found him here, Jessie would be in just as much danger. Then why the hell are you still here, old man? You got a car, you got money. Get the hell out of this armpit of a city before you blow everything! Maybe he could get her to leave with him. Sure, she had a kid, but it wasn’t like she had any kind of relationship with him. Of course, the money wouldn’t stretch as far with two people sharing it. He would be right back in another Nina situation, taking care of a needy girl who would slow him down and remind him of the things he was trying to escape.

Nina. Where all of this had begun. He wondered where she was now and if Ballas used her up and buried her in the backyard of that horrible place. No way could anyone survive six days of torment in that place, let alone six weeks. He hoped, for her sake anyway, that he was right.

It’s your fault she was even there.

Bullshit! Nina made her choice, even knowing what it would cost her. All those girls did. He’d been trapped like the rest of them in that brothel, doing what he was told, whatever it took to stay alive. He was done feeling guilty for that. But Alejandro’s face haunted him, those eyes that saw him for what he was. Alejandro would never be fooled by stupid jokes, would never mistake him for being a real father figure, and it was his voice that haunted him.

What you did was like opening the door for an agoraphobic cat. They wouldn’t know how to run or what to do once they were out. They wanted someone to take care of them because that’s the only way they understood the world. When a man was calling the shots. Alone, they would’ve been scooped up within a day or dead. Yeah, you’re a great moral beacon, all right, old man. It’s always someone else’s responsibility. Never yours.

That settled it. He rubbed his face and got out of bed. After dressing, he grabbed his shirts off the hangers and stuffed them in his bag. Then he started gathering up the other belongings he’d collected over the last few weeks. A couple books, a few decks of cards, small bottles of whiskey and vodka. The only thing left after that was the money. He hadn’t spent much of it. One advantage of falling into the clutches of a woman like Jessie was she kept him away from the casinos. Since he got here, he’d only dug out the suitcase from under the bed twice, and the next time would be the last. He would send her out to get them something to eat, and while she was gone, he would make his escape.

Man, fuck that. Go now, while she’s in the shower. Beat shit or just admit you don’t really want to leave. Lay down and fuckin’ wait for them to come for you. Either way, make a decision. Right. Just go. Just beat shit. Better than waking up one morning to find a gun in his face and Jessie’s brains splattered on the wall.

But he was too late to escape undetected. The water shut off in the bathroom just as he was hunkering down to grab the suitcase under the bed. So he sat down on the bed and waited for Jessie to come out. A few minutes later, she emerged in a cloud of steam, partially wrapped in one of the motel’s thin white towels. There wasn’t quite enough cloth to cover all of her, and that was normally just fine by him, but he looked away so he could stay focused.

“Dressed already? What’s the plan?” she asked.

He sighed. “Leaving.”

She turned to the mirror and started combing her wet hair. “Wanna grab some dinner? I know a great Polish place not far from here. I could go for some pierogie.”

“No, I’m leaving. I have to leave, Jessie. I’ve stayed here too long as it is.”

The comb paused mid-stroke, but she didn’t turn around. A minute later, she started combing again, this time harder, ripping at the tangles. “So, just like that, eh? I know we hadn’t exactly planned a wedding or anything, but I thought we were . . . I dunno.”

“Look, it’s not you.” And there it was. What was it about that line that was both so very honest and so very deceptive at the same time?

She slapped the comb down onto the counter and gave him a cold grin through the reflection in the mirror. “Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair in a jiffy. Just let me at least get dressed before throwing me out like the whore you obviously think I am.” Her words were clipped and sharp now. That was fine. Let her be angry. As long as she left.

“You take all the time you need,” he said. “I’m going to finish packing and get going.”

“Sure, whatever.”

The air was soupy, not just with the steam from the shower, but from the tension between them. He felt like he was wading through it as he grabbed his shampoo, soap, and razor. When he zipped his suitcase closed, he sat down and waited for her to get dressed. She wasn’t moving very quickly, and he restrained the urge to tell her to hurry. He didn’t want her to see him retrieve the money from under the bed.

She finally pulled on her shirt and pants and buttoned them, and then just stood there looking at him. “You clearly aren’t going to tell me what’s going on unless I pull it out of you, so I don’t see how I have any choice. What the hell is going on here? Ten minutes ago, I was riding you like a Preakness jockey, and now you’re running me out of here on a rail so you can skip town.”

Ramón wasn’t sure what to say next. If he told her, at least she would have an opportunity to protect herself. Cassini’s people could still come sniffing around long after he was gone, and if they got wind she’d spent time with him in a hotel room, they might torture her until she said anything they wanted to hear.

“I came here on the run. Was hoping I’d be able to get help from someone here, but it turns out the person I’m running from is here in town. I should’ve left weeks ago.”

Jessie sat down next to him. “Who are you running from?”

He took a deep breath and held it for a bit. Now was the time, if he was going to tell her anything at all. “I used to work for the Cassini family. Though I guess work is a loose word for it. I was doing jobs for them as a way to pay back a large debt I ran up a long time ago. But that’s ancient history. After thirteen years on the job, I decided enough was enough. I made off with some of their money and now I’m looking for help getting out of the country.”

She didn’t speak for a few minutes. Just stared at him. “Where are you looking to go?”

Don’t tell her, old man. Bad idea. You already told her too much.

“Somewhere in South America, I guess.”

“I had a feeling about you from the beginning, that there was more to you.” She grabbed her cigarettes off the nightstand and lit one. “Do I at least get to know your real name?”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Oh give me a goddamn break. What do you think I’m going to do? Go to the cops? Get myself mixed up in this bullshit? You already got me in enough trouble here.”

“No, I don’t think you’ll go to the cops.” That much was true, though now that she’d mentioned it . . . Could he trust her to remain quiet? Oh listen to you. Already thinking of how you can shut her up before she has the chance to talk. Old dog, same tricks.

“If your gangster friends come sniffing for you, is it really going to matter whether I know your real name? Have an ounce of fucking respect for me.”

He felt his temper rising. Why did women always have to turn so emotional and make it about them? “Jessie, that’s goddamn unfair.”

“Unfair? You’re kidding, right? You’re going to tell me about fairness after the bomb you just dropped in my fucking lap? I’ve been nothing but honest with you. I’ve told you things about myself that I haven’t told anyone.”

“I never asked you to do any of that. I never asked for any of this.”

“Yeah, but you took it, didn’t you? You took everything I had to give, and you can’t even give me the courtesy of your real name. I thought you were a little aloof, but I didn’t think you were such a soulless fuck.” She stubbed out her cigarette in the cheap metal ashtray and grabbed her purse. “Well, it was nice knowing you, Hermann, or whatever your name is. Happy trails running from the mafia.”

She walked toward the door, and Ramón stood up. “Jessie, wait!” Let her go, old man. What the fuck are you doing? But he couldn’t let her leave angry. Angry people were volatile. They were liable to vent everything to the first person who asked.

He touched her shoulder, turning her around to face him. Tears were streaming down her face, highlighting the dark circles and old acne scars her makeup and the dim tavern lighting had covered up so well when they first met. So many of his fights with Maria had ended just this way. The last one had ended even worse, with his hands around her neck. Alejandro hadn’t known that. Hadn’t seen the part where his father, enraged and out of his mind, had wrung the life out of his mother and then arranged the rope around her neck to make it look like suicide. Didn’t know about how he’d indebted himself to Victor Cassini for life in exchange for making the murder suspicions go away. But the boy had known deep down, hadn’t he? His mother hadn’t raised a fool, and Ramón hated both of them for it.

He pulled Jessie close, kissed her. She responded with a hunger he hadn’t experienced from her before, even after so many days of total abandon. He pushed her toward the bed, ripping off her shirt on the way.

Oh God I can’t do this. I can’t.

But he could, and he did. He entered her and lost himself in her heat. “My name is Ramón,” he whispered as he thrust deeper, harder. “Say it. I want to hear you say my name.”

Her frenzied eyes found his, her nails dragging up his back, delicious burning. “Ramón.” She even rolled the “r,” and it only made him harder for her.

“Fuck me, Ramón. Oh God, yes, fuck me. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.” She enveloped him in a warm, sweet flood and he did as she asked for as long as he could. At some point, in a delirious and exhausted post-coital haze, he slept.

***

The morning sun glinted in his eyes through the space in the room’s cheap vertical blinds. He sat up and immediately knew the motel room was empty.  He knew, even before he rolled out of the bed and onto the floor, painfully squashing his exposed testicles on the way, the suitcase he’d carefully guarded for weeks was gone. He stared at the empty space against the wall, where his fortune and his future once lay, almost as if he could will it to reappear, his anger slowly increasing to rage, like the RPMs in a behemoth of an engine.

You brought this all on yourself, old man.

Alejandro was his conscience now . . . Alejandro, all along. Alejandro, who would have loved to see his old man down on the floor like this, vulnerable and broken. Lost. Ruined by an opportunistic woman. A slut. Desperate thieving whore. He’d lived among so many of them over the years and yet he’d missed the biggest one of all right under his nose, his blind cock.

Eventually, he climbed to his feet, all his long years settling into his bones like a block of cement. He stood there for an indeterminate amount of time, his mind completely blank of all emotion and thought, until that block of cement turned to ice, the only sensation that had ever made him feel alive. Afterward, he searched the room for a note, something to tell him she only did it because she wanted to get her son back, or because the money was a curse from which she only wanted to relieve him, that she was taking that half-million to the ocean and tossing it in, freeing them both of its grip so they could, what? Stumble through life in this empty shithole of a fake paradise, broke, subsisting on sex and whatever they could scrape together on her bartender salary. Any of that might have lessened that blank fury in his mind, at least a little. Anything but this wordless, sneaking departure, this blatant robbery.

He found no note, no trace of her but her keycard on the nightstand and the remaining scent of her well-fucked cunt on the sheets. He went to his suitcase to see if she’d taken anything else. Particularly the thing he’d been keeping there since the night six weeks ago when he had taken care of another meddling bitch and left her on the side of the road.  He reached his hand into the deep side pocket and grasped the cold metal of the Magnum and pulled it out. The Madam’s pistol.

It was an appropriate tool for the job that lay ahead. The only real recourse he had left at this point.

Ramón took a shower and packed the rest of his things. Then he made a very important phone call. It didn’t take long. He only had to say who he was and his request was granted, as if they’d been expecting him. This could be a good thing, but he didn’t really care by this point. The meeting would be short and sweet.

He left his room key next to Jessie’s and carried his bag out to the car. There was two hundred dollars and change in his wallet—at least the bitch hadn’t left him completely high and dry—and he spent part of it on a huge breakfast at the little Polish restaurant Jessie mentioned last night. Part of him hoped to run into her here, but that would have been silly. If she was half as smart as she appeared to be, she was long gone. One thing was for certain, though. That money was cursed. He believed this now. She wouldn’t get far before it turned her into a coward and a fool, but unlike him, she lacked a killer’s instinct and his years of experience. She would spend it carelessly until it killed her, and that would be just fine with him. It was coming for us all, sooner or later.

He ordered the special from a huge woman who looked like she was carved out of white soap. Potato pancakes and a pile of kielbasa and scrambled eggs, toast and jam, and a lot of black coffee. It wasn’t his preferred breakfast. Ramón would live and die a huevos rancheros kind of man, but for what would probably be his last meal, it was good. Flipping through the newspaper but not actually reading it, he noted the date. Halloween. It wasn’t Dia de los Muertos, but it was close enough.

After paying the bill, he stepped out of the little diner and into the chilly morning. He only had to drive less than a half mile for his appointment, but he drove slowly, taking in the sights. Some people were already dressed in costume, preparing for a full day and night of holiday debauchery. But Ramón wouldn’t need a mask. For the first time in years, he’d taken his off.

He parked on the street, a block away from the Blue Diamond Hotel and Casino. It was time to meet with the man he should have met three weeks ago, but he didn’t intend to stay long.

Chapter 16

Madam Sacrifices Her Queen

It was a quiet night of business at the Weeping Willow, though there had been decidedly fewer visitors to the house than usual in recent days. She didn’t have to look at the ledgers to know this. The lack of squeaking bedsprings and muffled moans that normally populated the house was evidence enough. But it was also Halloween night, which was typically slow even in the best of times. Even Victor’s babysitters were taking the night off. Some of them were family men, with kids to take out trick-or-treating. How quaint.

This was to her advantage. She had to pick the lock to get into her office and conduct a few important items of business before settling in to wait for Victor. Undoubtedly the buffoons running the joint now had ransacked the place of all its hidden treasures, but she was counting on them missing a particularly well-concealed panel in the back corner of the room. To her delight, she was correct. Even she had to spend a moment looking for the little hairline crack in the baseboard, which was a testament to the craftsmanship of this old roost and its little nooks. She slid back the plank hidden behind the baseboard, revealing a space that was far deeper than it was wide. In it she found her “emergency kit” filled with essential odds and ends she’d collected over the years without any strict purpose in mind, other than they fulfilled her more macabre and violent interests. Hank Ballas, or whatever freak was living in his house now, might have understood.

The last two days had been a waking nightmare, but it also had the benefit of waking her up completely from the stupor she’d been in since the night Ramón had shot her. After ignoring more than a dozen calls from Benny on the first day, she took the battery out of her phone and threw it into one of the more cluttered corners of her room. When anyone knocked on her door, she barked at them to go away. They would summon Victor soon enough to deal with her, and that’s exactly what she’d hoped. She could imagine how the call might have gone.

“Hey, boss. She’s gone full gonzo. Won’t even come out of her room. I think she’s been talkin’ to somebody. Yeah, I heard she’s been messin’ around down in Jersey with that nosey Jew. You might want to come handle this.”

Yes, let him come. She was counting on it. As for the nosey Jew, she’d decided the deal was dead in the water. He pretended to care, titillating her with the flesh and promises of power and riches, but he was just another alpha male gorilla who thought the dangling meat between his legs made him special. She might take care of him one day soon, but she had more immediate matters to tend to.

If she hadn’t gotten out of the car at the Ballas place, things might have been very different right now. She would have still been deluded enough to think she had a horse in this race, that she could play with the boys, follow their old boys club rules, and still come out on top. Even Dante, the one who knew her better than anybody, who understood her cunning and propped her up from the shadows of his monstrous son’s misdeeds, had fallen victim to the same old bullshit in the end, and ultimately he was the reason she was sitting here now, like some deformed freak locked away in a bell tower, waiting for a man to decide her fate. It was a heavy mantle to leave on a man so many years in his grave, but she had a feeling Dante himself would have agreed, and if he was watching her now from the great beyond, she liked to think he would be satisfied to see her do what he’d lacked the balls to do himself.

She remembered Clayton’s warnings not to get out of the car. The driver, perhaps the only decent man-monkey left on the planet, seemed genuinely to care for her safety.

“I don’t like this place, Ma’am. We need to go now.”

“Shut it, Clay. You don’t know me very well, but trust me I can handle myself just fine.” She knew her scarred face was a direct contradiction to this statement, but her remaining eye dared him to say something about it. She would have brained him if he had.

The silhouette in the window thirty feet away had been too alarming to just let go, and the Madam had to see the girl up close. Part of her insisted it couldn’t have been Nina. This girl had been too pale, too thin. More like a ghost than an actual person. The Madam didn’t have rescue on her mind, exactly. Just an inexorable curiosity and an insatiable anger and indignation that her property had been treated in such a manner. She hadn’t always been the kindest mistress, but she took care of her own. She looked after her girls. Punished them harshly when they went astray, yes, but she never starved them, never degraded them or tortured them for the pure enjoyment of it.

The curtain fell back across the window before the Madam even got out of the car, but she didn’t doubt for a second what she’d seen. She only had one eye, but it was her best one and it was working better than ever to compensate for its missing mate. The girl was there, without question.

Dead leaves and twigs crunched underfoot like old bones as she approached the house. It loomed over her, its shadow both cold and heavy. She could still feel it on her heart, even now, telling herself that if she’d known about the madness of the Ballas place, she never would have sent her girls up there. Or so her good friend hindsight assured her. She’d heard the commotion inside before she even reached the window. There was someone in there, all right. More than one someone. She heard two voices, both female.

“Who is she? Who is that bitch?” one of them said.

“I don’t know. Please don’t hurt her!” That was Nina. Her voice was weak and hoarse, but the Madam remembered that flat Midwest accent well. She also remembered it, because when she sat in her office and gave Nina the choice to stay on at the Willow or go visit her final client, it was the last time she had been in control of anything. It had been her final administrative act in her running of the Willow, and that had an important place in her memory. She also knew that voice, because at one time, she’d owned it, and as far as she was concerned, the ties of ownership were deeper than blood.

Before she could even question whether it was a smart move, she reached through the wrought iron bars and pounded a fist on the grimy glass. “Hey! That girl is mine, do you understand me? I never agreed to a sale! I want my property back!”

All commotion behind the window ceased. A moment later, the Madam heard a rolling sound echoing off the walls inside, followed by the creak of door hinges. She backed up and looked over to see the front door standing wide open. From where she stood, the house was as dark as ink inside.

“Ma’am, please come on back!” Clayton called out behind her. He was standing outside the car now, gripping the top edge of the door, his complexion faded to an ashy gray.

He was right, of course, and strictly in the name of self-preservation, she should have listened to him—there was that damn hindsight again, cooing out its would’ve should’ve could’ve lullaby—but she was too incensed in that moment to care about a cowardly negro’s case of the vapors.

“Stop clutching your goddamn pearls,” she muttered and stomped toward the porch, pulling out one of her special stiletto hair pins as she went and concealing it in her fist. It was no gun—stupidly, she’d left her gun at the Willow before her last trip down to Benny’s—but she could use it in a tight spot to jab out an eye or pierce a carotid artery. She knew the anatomy well.

Mounting the steps, climbing ever closer to the yawning blackness, a chill fell over her and a quiver began in her belly that might rage into a full bodily earthquake if she didn’t keep hold of herself. Her foot hesitated taking the final step onto the landing. She could see a shape in there now, a silhouette of head and shoulders outlined by orange flambeaux lighting. Ballas. Had to be. Only something seemed very wrong with him. Wrong enough to fill her with the purest revulsion. Get out of here. Get out of here now, you stubborn old woman.

“I want to know why you thought it was okay to steal from me,” she said, defying the terrified voice in her head. “We never made any sort of deal for you to buy my property. I’ve come for what’s mine.”

“Come inside. We can discuss it over tea,” he said.

She frowned. There was something wrong with the man’s voice. Not merely the raspy sound of it, but its location. It seemed to be coming from high above him. The dislocation of it made her head hurt a little.

“No, you bring her here,” she said. “And I’ll leave and not involve anyone else in this matter. You should consider yourself lucky you haven’t been arrested.”

He laughed, or at least a harsh series of coughing gasps she thought was a laugh. The sound was as cold and lifeless as a grave, and she fell back a step, her heart thrumming double time. She resented the fear, clawed at it before it could overcome her fury. She would not be laughed at by another man, not in this life. Not after everything she’d been through. The next man who underestimated her would have his testicles turned into a pair of earrings.

“You think this is funny? You think you can just steal from me?” she screamed. “Well, I’ve got a hell of a punch line for you, freak.”

She grasped the little stiletto between her knuckles and stormed into the house, trying to ignore the cold darkness that settled over her like a cloak. And the smell. Oh God, the horribly thick smell of things rotting and decaying all around her, both house and flesh. She could hear Nina screaming in the other room. It was the grating roar of a girl hanging onto the last shreds of her sanity. The figure before her didn’t move. It was as if he was some kind of dummy. Or maybe a corpse, her frenzied mind suggested. Absurd, but not completely improbable.

A creaking sound from above caught her attention, and that’s when the Madam saw . . . it. The thing that would haunt her every waking moment in the hours and days since. It was white, nearly translucent, with long, spindly limbs. Like a . . . a spider. She caught only a glimpse of its face in the shaft of daylight falling through the open door, but that had been enough to wipe away any notion she was dealing with an actual person. She turned on her heel and fled, barely escaping the fingers grabbing at the back of her coat.

When she stumbled out onto the porch, into the blessed daylight, the Cadillac was right there waiting, the front passenger door standing open.

“Get in!” Clayton was screaming, but she barely heard him over the furious screeching coming from inside the house as she dove in and clawed the door shut.

She thought she’d heard it say something, but even now she couldn’t be sure. It sounded like, “Mine! Miiiiine!” Tires spun in the dirt before the big black car sped off. She shared no words with the driver during the long ride home, despite his few tentative questions. She wouldn’t relive those few moments for his benefit. When Clayton arrived at the Willow, she stumbled out of the car before he could help her.

“Not a single word of this to anyone, Clayton. Do you understand?”

The driver’s face looked like a painted mask of terror. “I’m takin’ it to my grave, Madam. Count on that.”

And in the two days since, she hadn’t left her room, not even to eat. Her body was frail enough, and she couldn’t afford to lose much more weight, but the thought of eating now seemed almost perverse. Her mind was consumed with what she saw, or what she thought she saw, inside that cesspit. There wasn’t a person living there, not even something as low as a man. It was a thing. With that knowledge firmly embedded in her mind, everything else ceased to matter. This morning, she greeted a red Halloween sunrise and knew this was the day she would have to act, before action could be foisted upon her. She considered just leaving. She could pack a bag, gather up what little money she had left, and light out for the territories, leaving the tenuous alliance between Victor and Benny to implode on its own. All this manipulation in order to conquer a dubious empire seemed like far too much work now. If she’d learned anything about her trip to the Ballas mansion the other day, and hearing that lost girl’s screams, it was what would be waiting for her if she spent another moment in this web.

She then thought of Dante and their chess games in the boathouse, and how often and easily he would sacrifice his queen and still win. She asked once why he always did that.

“Sometimes you have to give the illusion of weakness in order to achieve the greatest strength,” he’d said. “If I trade my queen for yours, you assume I’ve leveled the playing field, but that’s just an idea I’ve implanted in your mind. By giving up what’s most important to me, I still win.”

The Madam understood what he’d meant, but she struggled to apply it herself both in chess and in life. Losing was losing. Weakness was weakness. Letting anyone see her weak was forbidden. But the game changed the night she took a gunshot to the face and started seeing the world through one eye. For weeks, she obsessed over how she could assume her old position of power and then rise above it to take the entire kingdom for herself. But she’d been looking at it all wrong.

If she wanted to win, she would have to make a real sacrifice.

The sound of a car outside pulled her attention to the window. She looked down to see a familiar black Maserati. Victor had finally arrived.

She decided she would greet him at the front door this time.

***

The look of surprise on his face quickly became suspicious. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Coffee, dear brother? I’ve just put on a fresh pot.”

“Where are the girls?”

She shrugged. “That isn’t really my business to know anymore, is it?”

“You’re here alone?”

“Alone enough.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “Shall we have coffee?”

Reluctantly, he led the way, pushing through the swinging door into a space dominated by an enormous butcher block island. “You know why I’m here,” he said.

“Of course. But there’s no reason to be uncivilized about this. We can share a cup of coffee first.”  She moved to get it, but he stopped her.

“No, I’ll get my own.” Clever man. Of course, she would have been disappointed if he hadn’t done just that. She’d laid out their cups ahead of time. A large, bulky ceramic one and a delicate fine china one. Victor wasn’t completely unpredictable; she knew which one he would pick, and he didn’t disappoint. He poured hot brew into each one and brought them to the table.

He sat down and put a spoonful of sugar into his. All the better to help the medicine go down, she thought.

“I’ve been in touch with a friend of ours,” he said. “You should have told me about your dealings with Benny Rosen.” He took a sip from his carefully tainted mug. Excellent.

“I haven’t had any dealings with him.” And that was true enough. Just pillowtalk. Everything else regarding the Shanghai deal was between the two men. She was just, what, window dressing?

“But you’ve been fucking him, haven’t you?”

“I fail to see how that’s any business of yours.”

He glared at her from deep eye sockets, his eyes rheumy and bloodshot. Victor Cassini looked his age tonight. “You are my business. Always have been.”

“So now you want to play father. If you’re worried about whether I’ve shared the family secrets, you can rest easy. The truth doesn’t exactly make me look appealing, does it?”

She took a sip of her coffee and he followed suit. The medicine should be taking effect shortly. It wasn’t enough to kill him. There wouldn’t have been any fun in that. “To what truth are you referring?” he asked. His hand was quivering, but it was difficult to tell if it was from the drug now coursing in his system or his mounting rage. It was likely both.

“Oh how deep your denial runs, Victor. It would almost be sad if it wasn’t so sick.”

Beads of sweat were forming on his artificially plumped brow. Oh this was going splendidly. She probably wouldn’t even have to use the stun gun she’d concealed inside her robe.

“You watch your fucking mouth, whore.”

“You don’t like hearing the truth, do you? You’re actually ashamed of what you are.” He was really starting to shake, and he nearly dropped his coffee cup. The Madam knew it was more than just fear now. She pressed forward. “What did you tell yourself when your own sister gave birth to your own child? Did it just split your brain right down the middle? I can’t even imagine.”

He tried to get up, but faltered, gripping the tablecloth with his age spotted hands. “You . . . You’ve poisoned me. Put something in my drink.”

“Oh, it isn’t poison. Just a little digitalis. Not enough to kill you, don’t worry. I wouldn’t let you go out so mercifully.”

He clawed for her, but she easily dodged him. She walked behind him and wrapped her arms around his chest. His shirt had grown wet rather quickly. Maybe she did overdo it a little on the dose, but Victor was a strong buck for an old fart. He’d live a little longer yet. And if he didn’t, she had ways of bringing him back around too.

“Come now, brother. Help me out. You’re heavier than I am, and I don’t want to have to lift dead weight onto the butcher block.”

He struggled, nearly slipping out of her grip, wheezing like an asthmatic. If he fell, she would just use the stun gun and manage. She could even work on the floor if she had to, but she didn’t want to get on her knees for him ever again, even for this. Victor didn’t much look like he was in the mood for fighting just then. Sweat poured out of his skin, making his face look like it had been dipped in corn syrup. His complexion, even with the sprayed-on tan, was bordering on ghostly. He was muttering something, but the Madam could only make out a few words. “Forgive us our trespasses. . .”

The bastard was praying! She slapped him across the face. “None of that nonsense now. I don’t expect anyone’s listening, anyway.”

Just then, the kitchen door opened and a girl walked in. One of the newer ones. The Madam couldn’t remember her name right then, a sure sign that she’d fallen from her perch. The girl got a good look at the scene and turned to flee, but the Madam called her back.

“You, girl, back here. Now!”

The girl crept slowly back into the kitchen. At least she still recognized authority when she heard it. “Yes, Madam?”

“What’s your name?”

“K-kelly, Madam.”

“Kelly, grab this fucker’s ankles and help me lift him onto the counter.”

“What’s wrong with him? Is he having a heart attack?”

The Madam closed her eyes and counted to one. Patience. “That’s none of your concern. But you’re going to  help me if you don’t want to end up just like him.” That got her moving. She grabbed Victor’s ankles and together the two women hoisted the most powerful crime boss in New York on to the island. The Madam pulled a length of butcher’s twine out of her pocket and tossed it to Kelly. “You ought to know how to tie a man up by now. Do it right. There should be some drawer handles to anchor him to.”

“Yes, okay.” She moved quickly while the Madam did the same to his wrists, all the while Victor howling out one obscenity and threat after another, between his huffs and wheezes.

“Whores. Cunts. When my men come back, you’re gonna wish you were in hell.”

Once she was done with her end of the job, Kelly stepped back from Victor like he was some diseased thing. The Madam supposed that was accurate enough. The girl remained still, a vacant look on her face. “What?” the Madam barked at her.

“Can I just say I’m glad for what’s happening right now, whatever it is? He’s . . . a monster.”

The Madam, who had only recently come to face to face with something much worse, nodded. “Listen to me, Kelly, and listen well. What’s about to happen here is going to be very ugly. He’s had it coming for a long time. You can stay and watch if you want, but I think you’d be doing me and yourself a bigger favor if you just got out of here. For good.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Seriously?”

“Yes. Go back to whatever life you had before you became dumb enough to wind up here. And take whoever’s left up there with you.”

The look of gratitude in the girl’s cow eyes was almost nauseating. “Okay. Give him hell,” she said and went out the way she came.

“You dumb bitch,” Victor said. “You dumb fucking slut. You think this ends here? The whole family will come after you for this. You won’t make it past the next block. You won’t even make it out the front door.”

The Madam pulled out the instruments and vials she’d taken from her emergency kit and arranged them on the counter. Picking up the scalpel, she began to cut along the length of his inseam. Expensive trousers were nothing against this baby. She nicked skin along the way, but she didn’t care about that. There would be many more where that came from.

Fully exposed to the dull kitchen light, his legs looked like something off a sad chicken, pale and skinny and flabby. Victor’s spray tanning didn’t extend below the neck, apparently. Next, she went to work on his shirt, cutting off the buttons one by one, taking delight in the way his breath hitched with each slice. Old man chest to go with the old man legs, but she had plenty of real estate to work her magic. She could already smell the blood, and it excited her more than sex ever could.

Finally, she began cutting off his underwear. Black silk bikini briefs. So disgusting, so telling of his vanity and how deeply he held it. When his balls touched the air, he screamed.

“Okay okay! Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything I did to you. Is that what you want me to say? I’m sorry!”

The Madam put down the scalpel and looked at the trembling piece of meat lying on the slab before her. She hadn’t even touched him yet, and he was already dissolving into a quivering puddle of contrition. “You’re sorry? That’s it? After everything you’ve done? I should have never been conceived. You can’t apologize for a fuck up that big.”

She pulled the pins out of her hair. Her handy little stilettos she may have picked up for just this somewhat Oedipal purpose all along. The one she’d been holding at the Ballas house was gone, likely dropped in her blind haste to escape. But she still had three more and only needed two. She grasped Victor’s head and held it tight.

“What are you doing?” His voice was almost girlish with fright, and the Madam heard liquid spatter onto the tile as his bladder let go. It was going to happen sooner or later.

“Hold still. You won’t even see it coming.” Moving swiftly so she wouldn’t catch him with his eyes closed, she stuck the pointed end of the hairpin into his eye. It ruptured with a not-so-subtle POP. His agonized howls were delicious. “You’re just like me now,” she muttered. “But not for much longer.” She moved fast with the second pin while his one remaining eye was bulging from its socket. The arteries in his neck were thrumming through the thin fabric of her sleeve as his heart rate skyrocketed. Blood and ocular fluid ran down his cheeks and temples like tears. She loved the poetry of it.

By now he was so hysterical, he likely couldn’t hear a thing, but she spoke to him anyway. Perhaps some of it was getting through. “I’ve done you a mercy, you know. You wouldn’t want to actually see what I have planned for you. Far better than you deserve after all the people you’ve tortured and maimed over the years, but I guess that means I still have a little bit of a heart beating in my chest. Strange.”

Upstairs she could hear footsteps running back and forth as the exodus of whores commenced. Percussion to the symphony of Victor’s crumbling empire.

“Just wait, dear brother. The best part is yet to come.” She picked up the scalpel and watched it gleam as she moved to the end of the butcher block. “Now hold still. I’m going to liberate you from the thing that’s poisoned your brain for far too long.”

She cut, and then she cut some more. She sliced and sliced until the blade went dull, and then she switched to a bigger blade. At some point, Victor’s screams stopped but the Madam hardly noticed. She was having far too much fun to stop.

***

She wasn’t sure how much time passed, but by the time she’d finished her dissection, Victor was an unrecognizable pile of viscera on the butcher block and she was drenched in blood. It streaked across her face and up her arms like war paint. She dropped the scalpel and listened to it clatter across the tile and then stepped carefully around the slippery puddles on the floor. Her shoulders ached, and her temples thudded from the exertion, but she felt better than she had in years.

However, her work wasn’t finished yet.

She went to the front door and stepped into the chilly night. A few kids in costume walked by. They gave her bloody clothes a wide-eyed look, but they kept right on walking, assuming it was a particularly gory costume. No one ever rang the bell at the Weeping Willow for Trick-or-Treat. Not for candy, anyway. She walked back to the garage and opened the door. Two gas cans were resting just inside, and they were full.

She carted ten gallons of gasoline back into the house and immediately began soaking the curtains, the cheap rugs, the books, the wood furniture—much of it antique, brought over from the old country. Not that she ever cared about such things. It was just stuff, and none of it had been hers. After making sure she’d expended every last drop in the cans, she stepped back into the foyer. Her eyes and throat were burning from the fumes.

“If anyone else is in here, I suggest you get out now! It’s about to get real warm in here!”

No answer but the tick of the mantel clock. The exodus was complete. She pulled out her silver Zippo, lit it, and tossed it into the nearby puddle. It was tempting to stay and watch the flames lick everything they touched, but she didn’t much want to join Victor in the afterlife just yet.

Outside, she pulled out the little souvenir she’d taken from his pants pocket. The Maserati keys. She hadn’t bothered packing a bag. There was nothing from this house she wanted. With one last place to go, she intended to get everything she needed there. As she drove off, flames exploded from the Weeping Willow’s living room windows. She’d sacrificed her queen, and she’d never felt stronger.

Chapter 17

Nina’s Declaration

The Madam and the man had both come for her, one right after the other. She didn’t know who the man was, but he seemed to know her. He didn’t look like one of the Cassini men, but she couldn’t think who else it could be. The Madam got away, and that was good. Nina hated the witch, but she didn’t want her to die the way the man had. Or would. She could still hear his screams coming from the floor vent in her room, which meant he was likely in the basement, begging for his life. Occasionally, he would call out for someone named Cameron, whom Nina assumed was the man’s kid.

“Cameron, Daddy loves you! I’ll be home soon, Cameron! Get you ice cream, buddy!”

But right now, he was silent. Maybe he was finally dead. Nina would ordinarily say there was only so much torture a human body could take, but she was living proof it was far more than anyone could imagine.

You did this, you know. You lured that poor man in here. Not that she’d had much choice. After the Madam got away, Junior was furious and he took every bit of it out on Nina. He strung her up by her neck, cutting off her oxygen until she began to lose consciousness. Then he dropped her just long enough to let her catch a breath or two before yanking her up again. All the kicking and exertion had caused her old wounds to open, and blood ran down her legs in streaks which she also hoped was possibly from a miscarriage. It was impossible to tell one way or the other. After he tired of the strangulation game, he started on Kali, slashing her face his long nails and doing who knows what else to her outside the bedroom. The woman refused to look her in the eye after that, shamed her faithful pet had turned on her. When the strange man arrived at the house, Kali pinched a place in Nina’s shoulder full of nerves, and an excruciating pain ripped down her arm.

“If you don’t bring this one in for him, he will make us both suffer, baby or no baby. Do you understand?” There had been no wiggle room. Nina noticed the slash marks on Kali’s face narrowly missed one of her eyes.

Speaking of which, the Madam had looked to be missing an eye as well. Nina had taken one more peek through the curtain when Kali noticed the visitor too. Her former mistress looked old and frail, hobbling her way unsteadily toward the window. Something bad had happened to her since Nina last saw her. Not that she cared. The bitch deserved to suffer at least a little bit, and Nina gladly would have traded an eye to be able to walk free of this place. But the bitch was as wily and lucky as ever, and she managed to escape. Nina hated her all over again.

So yes, Nina had lured that poor man into Junior’s web, not only to save her own ass, but also to give the freak something to do with his time. Clearly he was in need of entertainment. And Kali had informed her this morning it was Halloween, his favorite day of the year. Christmas for freaks, and his present was a new victim to torture and then perhaps make into a new puppet. She wanted to feel terrible for the man. He had, after all, come here to find her, but the guilt seemed to slide off her mind like beads of water on a freshly waxed car. Guilt was too exhausting right now. She could feel the lullaby of madness closer than it had ever been before, beckoning gently but a bit more insistent.

Come now, Nina. Everything is better here. You can make your own happiness and memories and nothing will ever hurt you again. Even Joey can be here if you want him to be. You can be together forever and ever, and nothing they do to you out there will matter.

But she couldn’t go there. Not yet, anyway. The introduction of the new distraction meant that for the first time, Junior was fixated on something other than her, and by extension, so was Kali. This was an opportunity, and she damn sure wasn’t going to sit idly by and indulge in la-la-land delusions when she had a chance to get out of here.

The promise to let her have more freedom within her confines still held, though it was likely more because Kali had new activities down in the basement requiring her attention than any of the platitudes she’d been spouting before the Madam showed up. So Nina considered that time best spent pacing back and forth in her room, building back up her strength. She refused to feel the pain between her legs, refused to let it slow her down, even though she was still soaking pads every few hours. It didn’t matter, though. She needed to walk. For the first time in her life, she actually cared about exercise.

The voice called up from below again.

“Hello? Are you there? If so, can you kill me? Please? I would like to die.”

Though his tone was nearly conversational, it was devoid of all sanity. It reminded Nina strangely of the Mad Hatter. Her skin flushed with goose bumps.

“Can someone please just say something to me so I know I’m not going crazy? I don’t want to be alone. I just need to hear another person. Please! Nina? Nina, is that you?”

She stopped pacing and crept closer to the vent, wanting so much to call out to him, ask him who he was, but so afraid it would bring either Junior or Kali up here in a fury to hurt her or tie her up again. Sorry, dude, whoever you are. I feel really bad for you, but I just can’t do that. You understand, right?

“No! Not you! Please don’t do that again. Dear God please don’t!” His words dissolved into weak screams and then defeated sobs that echoed up like the gibbering moans of a sad ghost. Finally, there was silence again. Nina would have told him it was a waste of time, begging like that. Nothing would move the spider-human to mercy, and it wasn’t like there was a God listening. She’d ruined her throat screaming, and her heart praying for a death that would not come.

Before the Madam showed up, Nina might have been able to plead with Junior and use some of her newfound influence over him to convince him to let the man go, or at least die with some measure of dignity, but it seemed she hardly mattered to him now that he had this new play thing. Was it some sort of twisted jealousy she felt? No . . . that couldn’t be it. But what else could explain the indignation she felt? It kept her awake when all she wanted was to sleep. At least he hadn’t strapped her to the bed again. Maybe it was his way of saying thanks. The measure of comfort she found in that (I’m a Good Girl) was horrifying. This was how kidnappers won.

The curtains were open, but Kali had come in late last night and spray-painted the windows black. No more sunshine for her. It was permanent nighttime now, a cave. The only light came from the purplish-blue bug zappers, and Nina was disturbed to find her eyes preferred them over natural daylight now. This was how Junior likely became Junior. Maybe in a couple more months, she’d be slithering along the rope web too.

The lock on the bedroom door clicked and Kali entered a few seconds later. “Come with me,” she said. The woman sounded tired, and she didn’t look much better either. Her customary red sari was tattered and wrinkled, like a wind sock left out in a hurricane.

“Come with you where?”

“I don’t want to argue with you. I haven’t slept in three days, and my face hurts. He wants to see you. Just follow me.” She placed a loop of rope around Nina’s neck. It was fashioned into some sort of slipknot, and she saw it attached to a length of rope in Kali’s hand. A leash. Lovely. She could have asked Kali which “he” she was referring to considering there were two male creatures in the house now but it would have been flip and Kali really didn’t seem up for such things. Junior’s loyal slave always inserted that one syllable word with just enough emphasis to make it very clear.

Nina couldn’t muster an ounce of sympathy for her. She was as bad as Junior, taking care of his household and letting him perform sadistic acts on innocent people. And for what? Money? Some twisted form of motherly love? Was she his mother? She hadn’t even given thought to that before, but somehow she doubted it. Any mother of Junior would have to be catatonic or dead, unable to bear the reality of spawning such a monster. Kali didn’t seem so much maternal as she did reverent, like Junior was someone she almost worshipped. Or, at the very least, represented like a talent agent of some sort. Either way, they made an interesting pair, one where it was impossible to tell who was in charge of whom. They were. . . symbiotic. The thought of actually being in cahoots with Junior made her feel sick, if only because she now understood it. She could see herself a bit in the woman now. Hadn’t she been in a similar relationship with the Madam at one point? Quietly subservient and resigned to her role in the Willow, keeping the monster in charge happy at all costs? Perhaps it was an act of self-preservation, but hadn’t there been a little desire there at one point too? Hadn’t there been a time when she wanted to please her mistress? If anything, just to lessen her own suffering a little. She couldn’t deny that, no matter how much she wanted to. Kali had said Nina would be just like her one day, and the pull of it was strong now, like weak iron shavings to a powerful magnet.

She let Kali lead her out of the room like a dog, down the hallway lit with the orange flambeaux just as it had been her first night here. Not much else had changed from her original memory of it. She was thankful she’d never had to see it in the daylight. Instead of turning left into the dining room, they went right. It took Nina a moment to figure out what sort of room she was in, but then she saw familiar shapes in the moonlight shining through a window. The handle of a pot on the stove, the bulky rectangle of a refrigerator, the swan-like neck of a sink faucet. It was an enormous kitchen, far bigger than the one in the Weeping Willow. It looked more like something from a restaurant. There wasn’t enough light for her to judge the cleanliness of it, but she was again grateful. After all, the meals she’d been eating the last couple of months likely were prepared in this room. Sometimes it was best to indulge in ignorance. She noticed the vast array of ceiling webbing carried through this room as well. There didn’t seem to be a spot in the house Junior couldn’t travel with his strange form of locomotion.

The kitchen was longer than it was wide, and at the end were two doors. The one on the left wall led outside. It didn’t look particularly well fortified. It had a single lock and a pane of glass with a blind covering it. She briefly entertained a fantasy where she grabbed the nearest heavy object to bash Kali over the head, and then broke the glass, not caring if she shredded her flesh as she climbed out. She was used to bleeding.

But Kali was not frail or petite by any stretch. The chances she could hit the woman hard enough to incapacitate her were nil. Nina had seen a show on TV once explaining how the “Hollywood knockouts” were largely fiction. It was actually almost impossible to knock someone unconscious with a random hit to the head. All she’d earn from her troubles would be more punishment from Junior, and probably a return to life under the bed straps. If she was lucky.

She turned her attention to the other door, since that’s where Kali seemed to be leading her, and she already had an idea where this one went. There would be stairs, likely steep and squeaky planks of wood in an old house like this. Kali opened the door and Nina saw her hunch had been right. They were going down to the cellar, where the creature of the house was almost certainly keeping his new prisoner. The web of ropes ended here, oddly enough. Rigging hung over her head, awaiting the return of its master. For whatever reason, he was content to roam freely on the floor down there.

The greenish fluorescent light gave everything a sickish cast. The smell of sharp chemicals mingled with blood and dirt wafting up made her stomach roil. Down there was Junior’s shop of horrors. His lair where he truly lived. She wanted to raise a protest, but the unflappable Janie Quick, who had been mysteriously absent from her mental dialogue the last few days, finally spoke up. She sounded as tired and defeated as Nina felt. Save your energy, girlie. I have a feeling you’re gonna need it. Kali turned to her before descending.

“These steps are old. The ceiling is also quite low. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that running into me as we go down would be a very bad idea for both of us.”

Nina nodded. “Got it. Just go.”

She held tight to the rail as she made her way down, the steps bowing slightly under her weight. When she reached the bottom, she gagged. The reek of blood and filth was still there, but the chemical smell was even stronger. She was vaguely reminded of the time she dissected a cat in her high school anatomy class. The stench from the preservatives would sink into her hands, even through two layers of gloves, and it refused to wash off, no matter how much she scrubbed. And now, down here in this dungeon, she felt like she had buried her face in that preserved cat’s hide and took a deep whiff.

She retched and the back of her throat burned with acid. Kali shook her. “Not here, not now. Swallow it back and keep moving.”

For a moment, Nina didn’t think she would be able to stop it. In her experience, once the puke button was pressed, there was no going back. But a brief memory of Junior stringing her up by the neck again helped, and she stood up straight. “I’m okay, I think.”

Kali yanked the leash again and led her away from the stairs. The basement was as enormous as the house itself. She could hear the rumble of a furnace, the drip-drip of water from leaky pipes. She also heard a few scratching sounds here and there, but pushed them away before she started ruminating on the possibility of rats. As she walked deeper into the crypt like space, the air grew colder and droplets of damp mist clung to her skin. The green light ahead grew brighter, coming from the other side of a five-foot piece of wall jutting out from the right. She could hear him shuffling around on the other side doing God knew what.

But what she could hear even louder was the sound of the man moaning and mumbling to himself. She didn't want to see him. She wanted to plant her feet in the packed dirt like a stubborn mule and not move another inch. Whatever was on the other side of the wall might rip away the remaining shreds of her sanity, because the horrors Junior had inflicted upon her over the last several weeks were going to be even worse for someone who had come to his abode uninvited.

They stopped just before the wall and Kali turned to her, eyes wide and glassy. The bandage on her face bore spots of fresh blood, like little poppies. “This is all for you. He has been working very hard. It would be best not to react in any negative way. You have seen how he deals with insult.”

I’ve also seen how he treats his invited guests, she wanted to say. It’s all the same to me. She followed the woman around the wall and took in the sights before her through a mental veil. He couldn’t be real, he couldn’t possibly be real. He must be a dummy. A plastic thing. He most certainly couldn’t be alive. It was the only way she could bear the sight of him without screaming or vomiting, or both.

The man was naked and strapped to a gurney set to the vertical position, his arms and legs spread wide. She thought of the classic drawing, the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci, only there the subject had been an intact and idealized representation of the human form. Here, this man had been mutilated beyond all recognition. His skin was deep red and bubbling into blisters that popped before her eyes, running with thick pus, as if Junior was melting off his flesh with acid. That was the chemical smell, combined with liquefying flesh, Nina had gagged on from several feet away. Here the smells wrapped around her head like a blanket, suffocating her. She took measured sips of air, and only when she absolutely needed them.

His eyes were gone, already replaced by the strange white orbs that were in all of the other human puppets. The pupils this time were black question marks staring up at the ceiling in eternal inquiry. And he’d been made into a puppet. His arms hung from strings attached to hooks in the ceiling.

Except those aren’t strings, honey girl. Not the kind you’re thinking of.

No, the alternative was too horrifying to accept. He couldn’t have survived all the cutting, the excruciating torture of having his . . . his muscles flayed from his body in such a way, like pieces of tough jerky.

But it looked as if he had. He was still alive, because Junior was keeping him alive. Tubes fed into exposed veins, pumping in blood and other fluids. Nina saw a defibrillator standing by. For whatever reason, the sick freak wanted to keep the man alive. He wanted to milk every bit of pain he could out of the man until he was beyond any lifesaving intervention.

Why won’t you let go? Why won’t you just give up and die, you idiot?

As if she’d been so good at it.

Junior walked out from behind the gurney just then. He was standing upright, and that was perhaps the biggest shock of all. Nina didn’t know he was capable, but then again why wouldn’t he be? It had to take some strength to spend most of one’s days crawling around on an artificial web and operating human puppets. And he would have to come down at some point to do his . . . handiwork. He didn’t stand very tall. Nina guessed he was probably about five-three, a few inches shorter than her. The racks of his ribs and the knobs of his spine stood out sharply beneath his translucent skin. In the harsh light, she could see even more of his mutations. The pointed ears, the knobby bone of his skull, the webs between his extra toes. He was naked. He was always naked, but the shadows had always concealed his genitals from her. Now she could see why he never tried raping her himself. His penis was not much bigger than a small child’s. Good enough for masturbating but not much else.

She next wondered if he was even fertile. A lot of mutated animals weren’t. And if he wasn’t fertile, then whose baby was she carrying? Was it possible she could have been pregnant before she even came here? Is that maybe why he wanted to keep her and not the others? Maybe he’d smelled it on her, if that was even possible. Or maybe he used someone else’s semen. Like his father’s. She didn’t even want to imagine how that might be possible.

How pathetic is it you don’t even know your body good enough to know if you’re with child? When I was pregnant with you, I knew the second it happened. A cloud crossed the sun and the shadow hit my heart and never left. That’s how I knew I was havin’ a baby.

Nina remembered the first time her mother had told her that story. She’d been in the first grade, and Janie Quick liked to re-tell it often, though mostly on the days when the arthritis was really getting her, or when she’d guzzled enough beer. The Lupus hadn’t kicked in until after Nina was born, so of course the kid was the most logical scapegoat.

She didn’t know what to do with all this information. Not now. Not with Junior standing there looking at her with those strange eyes, the third eye in between the two. At this distance and in this light, it looked like it could be fake, but what did it matter? Didn’t change a damn thing. She was in its basement with little hope for escape.

“What are you doing with him?” she asked.

He snarled and Kali urged her with the leash to sit down in the chair she’d dragged over. Nina resisted at first, but finally bent her knees. She was tired of being choked for someone’s enjoyment. Her eyes fell onto a table of sharp instruments sitting near the man. On one of them was something she recognized immediately, and she had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from having a verbal reaction to it.

The Madam had this set of sharp, sword-like hairpins the Willow girls all knew. She’d used them for all sorts of fun purposes. Poking, prodding, and threatening, mostly, but she’d also removed a girl’s fingernails with them once, too. She must have dropped this one in her haste to get away the other day, and now it was sitting here among Junior’s scalpels, saws, clamps, and forceps. An accidental gift from one sadist to another.

The man moaned thickly on the gurney, reminding them all he was still conscious, like one of those guys who had lost half his body in an explosion but still had the lack of luck to keep on breathing, even with all of his organs on the outside of his body. There was a point where such a thing stopped becoming an admirable will to live and started looking more like a very cruel joke.

“Why won’t you just let him die? Don’t you understand he wasn’t here to hurt anyone? He was just looking for me.” God knew why. Had her mother sent him? Unthinkable but not exactly impossible. Kali’s fingers dug into her shoulder as a warning, but Nina barely felt it this time. She was too pissed at what she was seeing here. Kali was afraid too, but Kali was a coward.

Junior glared at her and walked over to his tray of instruments, picking up a scalpel. Kali yanked Nina’s hands behind the chair and started binding them with the rope of the leash still around her neck in sort of a half hog tie. “What are you doing?” Nina asked.

“You will never learn compliance,” Kali said.

A nightmare of images flashed through her mind as Junior leaned in closer, the blood-crusted metal of the blade still managing to gleam in the sickly light. She thought she understood now why Junior brought her down here. He wanted her to witness what he was capable of, how far he could take someone to the edge of madness and agony and still keep them alive. He could turn living muscles into puppet strings, he could melt off skin with caustic chemicals, he could take their eyes out and replace them with painted white balls. He could make life cling to his victims like hungry leeches.

He’d just been toying with her before, doing some sick and twisted version of a Mother Theresa act because for whatever reason, he felt soft toward her, even as he mutilated her womanhood and kept her strapped to the bed or tied ropes to her limbs and made her dance with his dead daddy. He was telling her she had to find a way to endear herself to him again, that he would take every single thing she could live without, just enough to keep her heart beating so he could take the baby inside her. And after he did that, then what?

Probably turn that into one of his little puppet people, too. Hell, it’s already attached to its own little string.

As the blood crusted scalpel blade neared her eye, she said the only thing that came immediately to her mind. “I love you.”

The scalpel stopped and then faltered.

“I love you,” she said again. “I’m sad no one else has loved you, and that you have to hurt people in order to get the same feeling most of us get when we love each other. If you…”

Come on, you idiot, finish the deal!

“If you show this man mercy by killing him, I will stay with you. Forever. I will marry myself to you and have your child. We can live here. Like a family. All four of us.”

She felt herself growing colder as she spoke, her stomach doing flip-flops. But the scalpel wasn’t getting any closer, which was something. To her astonishment, the Beauty and the Beast routine was actually working. She took a deep breath and leaned forward and kissed the cool flesh of his arm. He grunted and jerked, but she kissed him again higher up, and his hand gripped the back of her head, pulling her hair painfully. She used to like that, long ago, but now her skin rippled in revulsion. Suddenly, his mouth was on hers, and she tasted the fetid depths of him as he breathed into her mouth and jabbed his tongue forward in a rotten meat kiss. His sharp teeth cut into her lips and she immediately tasted blood, but she closed her eyes tight and kissed him back, the collective voices in her head, including Janie Quick’s, screaming from pain and sheer disgust. She hoped her moans and hardening nipples passed as arousal rather than the chills currently worming like maggots through her gut.

Finally, he ripped himself away, his mouth covered in blood like clown makeup, and yanked her up from the chair by her arm. All strength. His nails dug into her flesh as he turned her around and cut the binding away from her wrists. She had just a moment to see Kali’s face, a mixture of fright and suspicion. And something else . . . Jealousy? He whirled her back around and pushed her toward the man.

She stumbled forward and crashed into the tray of instruments, which tumbled to the floor in a metallic clatter. But she’d acted just quickly enough to save herself from falling, and to grab the thing she had been eyeballing a moment before. She concealed it carefully in her fist, hoping beyond all reason they didn’t see it. A magician she was not. Her clumsy hands had netted her a brief stay in jail when she’d attempted to pick pockets in her early New York days. Before Joey. Before everything. But in the bare seconds she had with her back turned, she deftly slid the hairpin in the only place available to her: beneath one of her breasts. Easy enough due to the sleeveless gown she was wearing. She just hoped there was enough sweat there to hold it in place. The cold metal so close to her heart was both comforting and exhilarating.

Junior grabbed her again and turned her around. He sniffed her, running one of his fingernails down her chest, toying briefly with the nipple of the breast that was now concealing what she hoped would be her ticket out of this place. She didn’t dare breathe. If the two inches of steel slipped loose right now, he would flay her open without a second’s hesitation. But then Junior did the inexplicable. He placed the scalpel into her hands.

Kali called out. “No, don’t!”

Nina wasn’t sure if the woman was referring to the scalpel or if she was trying to alert him to the thievery, but Junior turned to her and growled, baring his pointed teeth at her. Kali fell back a step and bowed her head. Then Junior looked at Nina and said, “You. Kill it.”

Her heart sped up and she looked at the mutilated man, who now appeared to be unconscious. His breath was coming out in slow rattles. He might have come here to save her, and she would see to it that he hadn’t failed in his mission, even if he lost his life in the bargain. Junior was testing her loyalty right now, though. If she wanted to, she could just as easily turn the blade on him, open up his throat and let the poison running through his veins spray out.

But she would not do that. Not yet.

Nina had done a lot of bad things in her life, but she’d never killed anyone before, at least directly. She noted the irony that in doing so, it would probably be the most compassionate thing she ever did. After all, this was her fault. The series of events leading to this man’s death all began when she decided it would be a good idea for her and Joey to rob some mobster’s warehouse in Queens. She grasped the handle of the blade in her hand, still warm from Junior’s hand, and stepped up to the man. There was no question about the quickest way to make it end for him.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured and raised the blade to the man’s neck, where the flesh was, for the most part, still intact. She could even see a few days’ worth of beard growth.

The scalpel was sharp, but it still took a little work to get through the flesh. Nothing was ever as easy as it looked on TV. He made a gargling sound as the gash in his throat grew deeper. Then the artery opened and his blood flew out and warmed her face. He shuddered on the gurney for a moment, the air filling with the stink of his urine and whatever remained in his bowels as they let go. Then he lay still. Dead.

She turned to Junior, letting the scalpel fall from her blood-soaked hand.

“Thank you,” she said. And she meant it. He looked at her for a moment and then pushed her back toward Kali. The freak and his assistant seemed to understand one another without speaking, for Kali took her by the remainder of her leash and led her away.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I don’t like it. I don’t like it one little bit,” the woman said.

“I’m trying to save our asses.”

“You don’t need to worry about mine.”

She pushed Nina toward the stairs and she climbed them, her legs trembling as she went. When she reached the top, Nina stopped and reached under her breast and clasped the Madam’s hairpin. “You know, I think you’re right.” She turned around and, hoping with every fiber of her being she wouldn’t miss, aimed the pointed tip of the little dagger right at the bitch’s eye and stabbed.

Kali screamed and Nina felt a squish. Bullseye. Junior’s screams echoed up from down below. The woman’s arms flailed, grabbing for purchase as she reeled backward over the abyss of the basement steps. Her eyes adjusted well over time to dim light, and Nina could see the end of the miniature handle of the knife jutting from Kali’s eye socket. With the heel of her hand, she pushed it all the way in, burying it in the woman’s brain. Kali spasmed, her grip tightening on the rope around Nina’s neck as she fell back the way she came, pulling Nina with her. Her air cut off as she gripped the doorjamb.

Just then, Junior appeared at the bottom of the steps, fury branding his horrible face. Risking everything and gambling on her last deep breath, she yanked herself back as hard as she could and slammed the basement door shut just as he reached the top of the stairs.

The rope had loosened around her neck, but it was still shut in the door. Nina pushed her weight against it as Junior beat against the wood, screaming, nearly pushing it open, his hand groping out to grab her. Nina’s mind a racing terror, she clawed at the doorknob to check for a lock, but found nothing. Soon, her strength would give out and he would break through and he would end her.

Just as the last of her strength ran out and Nina surrendered to her fate, bright light filled the kitchen that, to her sensitive eyes, was as powerful as the sun.

Chapter 18

Ramón and the Madam

He didn’t have a precise plan when he walked into the Blue Diamond. Just a final destination in mind. He quickly glanced into The Nile Tavern and wasn’t surprised to find a young man working behind the bar. Of course Jessie wouldn’t be there, but he had to scratch the itch.  He walked up to the reservation desk, where a young woman in a dark blue jacket and red scarf stood waiting with a professional smile. “Can I help you, sir?”

“I’m Ramón Gutierrez. Here to see Mr. Rosen. I have an appointment.”

“Certainly. Follow me.”

She led him past the bank of elevators to a room filled with dark wood and leather. It reminded him a lot of the Madam’s office at the Weeping Willow, only without all the nude paintings. “Mr. Rosen will be down shortly. Help yourself to a drink, if you like. The bar is over there.”

“Thank you.”

He watched her walk off, taking a second to admire the pretty legs coming out of her skirt, but he did not help himself to a drink, nor did he sit. This wasn’t a sitting man’s errand. He intended for this to be quick.

“Mr. Gutierrez?”

Ramón turned around to see a young man, a kid really, with a thinning head of dark curly hair standing in the doorway. He was short. Shorter than the Madam, Ramón thought, and wearing a gray suit that looked like it had been tailored for someone forty pounds heavier. Maybe he’d recently lost weight, or maybe he was too cheap to have his clothes properly fitted. So this was Benny Rosen, the lunatic Jonny Spank told him about? Ramón wanted to laugh. Instead he said, “Yeah, that’s me.”

Rosen closed the door and walked over to shake his hand. Ramón obliged. The man’s grip was overly tight, like he was trying to compensate for being puny.

“I have to say, I was a little surprised to get a call from you. I’ve heard about you.” He walked to the bar, casual and seemingly ignorant of what was about to befall him. This was not a real Mafia man. If he was visiting Victor Cassini, he would have been frisked for weapons first thing, and they wouldn’t be alone. There would be two or three beefcakes guarding the door, hands hovering over holsters in case something went wrong. This man didn’t even appear to have an entourage. Ramón didn’t know if he should celebrate these favorable conditions or be more cautious. Maybe this right here was evidence Rosen was crazy. Or maybe he was just stupid.

“I bet the Madam spoke highly of me,” Ramón said.

“Hardly. Would you like a drink? I have some primo tequila here, and you look like a tequila man.”

Ramón actually hated tequila, but he was thrown a little off his game by the sudden shift of his expectations. “Sure.” He watched as Rosen pulled the cork out of a squat rounded bottle of liquid fire and poured them each a shot.

“One of my guys brought this stuff back from a little village near Baja. You know Baja?”

Ramón swallowed. “I do, yes.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t there right now. Man who got away with a steal like you did should be living it up on some unknown beach. But I guess you’ve had troubles getting out of the country.”

He didn’t like this. Rosen was controlling the conversation, and Ramón suddenly wasn’t sure what his next move should be. This was obviously the smaller man’s strength, and he understood now why there was no need for the extra manpower.

“Yeah, troubles.” He took the drink from Rosen’s outstretched hand and tasted it. Even for tequila, it felt good going down.

“How can I help?”

“Help?”

Rosen sipped his drink and gave a satisfied sigh. “Smooth as silk. Yes, help. Though I suspect you came here to kill me, which would be a very foolish thing to do.” His eyes glanced up to the ceiling, where a tiny black fish eye was looking down on them. “I have no fewer than thirty security guards with their eyes on this place. And you don’t strike me as a fool, Ramón.”

He wasn’t sure what to say. All of his intentions suddenly seemed very hollow. “Look, I have nothing left to bargain with. The money I had, which I would have used to pay for your assistance, was taken from me.”

Rosen laughed. “Stolen money is cursed money. If that’s not a famous proverb, it should be.” He carried his glass over to the humidor sitting beside one of the big leather couches and took one. “Cigar, Ramón? They’re the good kind.”

He shook his head. “No. Look, this was a mistake. I think I should just leave.” Yes, leave. Just take the two hundred bucks to a casino floor—not this one—and see if he could make it grow big enough to help him live for a while. He could get by. He’d survived on far less before.

“Leave? Listen, Ramón. I don’t believe in mistakes. I believe in opportunities. Serendipity. I don’t play sides. I’m not one of these mia familia types. Tradition is far too limiting. I’m a businessman, and I’m a futurist. You need to cut the apron strings once and for all and look at the opportunities.”

Ramón swirled the tequila in his glass and downed it. “What’s your opportunity?”

“Now we’re talking. Have a seat.” He gestured to the couch and Ramón sat. He felt the press of the concealed pistol against his back and ignored it. Rosen probably knew it was there, and he was too intrigued now to consider murdering the guy. At least for now.

“I don’t know for certain, but I think there’s been a big shakeup in the house of Cassini. Or there’s going to be. Contessa—you know, the Madam—has been out of touch for a couple days. She and I had grown close, but my instincts are telling me the business relationship we were forming is dead in the water.”

Ramón frowned. “How so?”

“I had a talk with one of my drivers, and let’s just say she had a bit of a scare at a place upstate I’m sure you know and love.”

A cold chill rippled through Ramón’s body. She actually went up there? Even after all this time, she wanted to try and get what was hers. Christ.

“What happened to her?”

“Can’t say for sure. My man only saw so much from his vantage point, and I believe him. She did make it out alive. Barely. But she’s been refusing my calls ever since. Something definitely rattled her. I had no choice but to call Victor in on the matter, out of concern for her wellbeing, you see. He and I have been finalizing an investment on the construction of a casino in Shanghai, so naturally, I felt it my duty to let him know that his sister was in danger. Despite my better sense, I do have a soft spot for the lady. But I have a theory. Would you like to hear it?”

Ramón found it hard to believe Victor would be dealing with a man like this, but if it was true, then Rosen had considerably more power and pull than Ramón anticipated. He was fascinated in spite of himself, and still not entirely sure what Rosen had planned for him. “Sure,” he said.

“I’ve gotten to know Contessa a bit over the last several weeks, and I can say that when she feels threatened, she can get more than a little . . . feisty. That made for some fun moments between us in bed, but I won’t titillate you with the details.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Suffice to say, I believe I may have effectively set into motion a bit of a chain reaction, and if I were a betting man—and I guess I am, considering my line of work—I would put my chips on the Madam coming out on top. Would you agree?”

He thought about it a bit. Victor was a ruthless dog, or at least had been back in the day, but he suspected the Madam had bigger axes to grind, having been forced to run the family brothel while her brother controlled everything else. She was also younger, and even weakened by her recent injuries, he thought she might have the edge if the knives came out.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Now, let’s assume she does manage to win in her little dogfight with the boss man. What does she do next? The woman was left without a dime. Victor cleaned her out, and who knows where he stashed her spoils. It’s why she came to me in the first place. I guess I have a welcome mat out for the northern syndicate’s newly downtrodden, but I digress. Keep in mind the dear Madam has some unfinished business at that house and not a cent to her name. And there’s a veritable goldmine just an hour’s drive from her doorstep. Granted, there’s a lunatic troll guarding the keep, but I don’t think that’ll faze her the second time around.”

“You think she’s going back to the Ballas place?”

“Bingo. Who in their right mind could resist that kind of loot?”

He couldn’t really fault Rosen’s logic. The man had the instincts of a keyed up bloodhound. And besides that, he was right. That no one could resist the Ballas fortune was half the reason they were all in this mess to begin with. “Where do I come into this?”

“Why, the chance to become a hero. And a rich one, at that. Don’t you see it? You get up there first. Slay the dragon, save the girl. My driver tells me the freak was keeping a prisoner. Probably the last girl you dropped off up there. That seemed to be what Contessa was so driven about. Of course, she could also be dead right now for all I know, Victor being the victor and all. But that’s irrelevant.”

“I thought you said stolen money was cursed money.”

Benny shrugged. “In this case, I think this money is more than earned.”

“And how much of the cut do you want?”

“Sixty percent of whatever you find. And a lock of the lovely Madam’s hair for me to remember her by.”

Ramón looked at him. “What do you want me to do with the rest of her?”

Rosen grinned, and Ramón finally saw the hint of the dancing lunatic Jonny Spank was talking about. Rosen was every bit as dangerous as Victor Cassini, if not more. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. You did a fine job incapacitating her the first time, but I recommend you use the gun you brought in with you and make things more final.”

***

Ramón raced north on the Garden State Parkway, his mind reeling over how smoothly Benny Rosen turned the tables on him. Victor Cassini, in the prime of his life, never had so much charisma or power to persuade.

Was he really going to do this?

It’s another errand, old man. Only this time, you’re taking orders from a boy young enough to be your son. How’s that feel?

He pressed the accelerator harder. What did it matter? Rosen’s plan was sound. He should have thought of it himself weeks ago, but he knew he never would have. The Ballas house had been the furthest thing from his mind. He didn’t think he ever could convey to Rosen just how bad the place was. Even after seeing only a glimpse of what lived there, his mind couldn’t really conceive of it. It was a place of madness and misery. But he continued on, pushing the needle on the old Buick’s speedometer past eighty.

He’d stayed for lunch at Rosen’s insistence and finally got out of there around a quarter to three. If he didn’t hit too much traffic, he would be up there by dusk. He flipped on the radio and tried not to think too hard about where he was headed.

***

His headlights illuminated the fallen manor’s rusted gate just after seven. There would be no need to push an intercom button this time. It was standing wide open, just as he’d left it. As he guided the car around the same dips and holes he had dozens of times before, he half expected to look in his rearview mirror and see a pretty girl all dolled up for her last night of sanity. But those days were gone. Now he was here to finish the business a better man would have finished a long time ago. He gathered up his courage as he crested the final hill and then slammed on the brakes when he saw what was waiting for him at the end of the driveway.

There were two cars here. One he didn’t recognize—an old Ford Taurus that looked to be on its last legs—but the other one he did. It was Victor Cassini’s prized Maserati Quattroporte. The driver’s side door was standing open, and right beside it was the now frail figure of the woman who once owned him. She didn’t turn when his headlights illuminated her. Ramón parked the car and grabbed the pistol from his waistband, making sure the safety was off before getting out. He aimed the sights at the back of her head as he approached.

“My property is in there,” she said, still not turning around. She’d been expecting him, it seemed.

“You don’t have any property left.” He’d heard the news on the radio about the fire at the “Weeping Willow Women’s Shelter” on the way up here. If the wind had been up, the whole block could have burned.

Finally, she looked at him. Her face was streaked with something dark. Bad makeup, or maybe dried blood, but her one remaining eye gleamed in the moonlight like a polished marble. “Good to see you, Ramón. I wondered if I might meet you here. I can smell fate in the air. This place has power in it. Can you feel it?”

He wanted to believe she’d lost her mind—this place did that to people—but he could feel it tugging at him, too. “I came here to do what I should have done years ago,” he said.

“Indeed. But I guess you’re going to kill me first.”

“That’s part of the deal.”

“What deal? If it’s with Benny Rosen, you’re even dumber than I thought.”

“It’s a better deal than you ever gave me.”

“Perhaps so, but it’s still a deal. That’s the problem with deals. There are always strings attached. Hidden clauses. One side making sure it can profit from the other, regardless of the outcome. Once you do what Benny wants, he won’t have any use for you. He’ll kill you.”

“Bullshit.”

She looked away from him and back to the house, unruffled by the pistol pointed at her head. “Maybe you’re right. I’m sure he’ll have plenty of use for a washed up old spic. He already has a driver, but maybe you can be his gardener.”

“Fuck you.”

“I know you, Ramón, probably better than anyone. Certainly better than your own blood. Your killer instinct isn’t what it used to be. You don’t want to kill me. Or maybe you do, but you don’t have the nerve.”

Cocking the Magnum, he stepped into point blank range. “You deserve to die.”

“We all deserve to die. And we will, eventually. But not tonight.”

“Says the bitch with a gun pointed at her head.”

She turned to him, and Ramón could see in the yellowish wash of his car’s headlights how used up she really looked. The fire that used to burn in her had been snuffed out. He was responsible for some of that, but not all. Something else had happened to her.

“Victor is dead. The Weeping Willow, and probably half the block around it, is nothing more than a pile of ash by now. I came here to get what belongs to me, and then I’m going to go somewhere far away. You would be good to do the same. If you want to do another crook’s dirty work, so be it. But you’d better make it snappy. I have a snub nose .38 pointed right at your dick, and I’m not a bad shot from the hip, even with one eye.”

He couldn’t see her hands in the shadows. She could have been bluffing, but it was impossible to tell with the Madam. It always was. Gun or no gun, she was right. A deal with Rosen was just another deal, and he was getting too old for those games. He slowly lowered his weapon. “So how do we do this?”

“We go in there and say trick-or-treat.”

“Nina’s still in there, isn’t she?”

“There’s an empty shell wearing her skin. Or what’s left of it.”

“Let’s finish this, then.” Ramón started toward the house, his blood growing colder with every step.

Chapter 19

Madam and the Good Girls

A veil of calm fell over her mind on the way up here that even her former driver waving his gun around couldn’t disturb, but the closer they got to the house, the more she could feel invisible fingers poking at it, trying to find a weak spot. When they climbed the porch steps, the Madam thought she heard screams, but the wind had picked up and it was whining around the eaves of the place.

Going into a real-life haunted house on Halloween night. Good times.

“Have my gun ready,” she said. “It lives up on the ceiling. Like a spider.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. His voice was low and trembling the slightest bit. She found comfort in his fear. It let her express a little of her own.

He turned the knob and the door opened with a loud creak. They exchanged a quick glance and then stepped over the threshold of the ghoul’s manor like a couple of kids on a Halloween dare. Except this was no yuck it up juvenile fantasy. There was something here that had sucked the minds out of at least a dozen women, and it was all because of her. The weight on her heart wasn’t just fear. It was guilt, as much as she could feel such a thing, anyway.

The orange flambeaux were still glowing, and just ahead sat the same silhouette of a man she’d encountered the other day, still in the same place. She was almost certain of it. Definitely a mannequin or some kind of statue. She peered closer at it, getting near enough to give it a timid poke. No, it wasn’t a mannequin. Mannequins didn’t have bones. It was a skeleton or maybe a mummified corpse, and there was something weird with its eyes. They were bright white orbs with black diamonds for pupils. Its teeth were filed to sharp points. She looked at Ramón, who was focused intently on the web overhead, and nudged his arm. He jumped and pointed the gun wildly around. Thankfully, the idiot’s finger wasn’t on the trigger. She wasn’t interested in being shot in the face a second time.

“What is this? Is it real?” she asked.

“You really need to ask that? Keep your eyes on the ceiling.”

“I am, don’t you worry.”

There was a bluish light coming from one end of the house, where she’d heard the screaming the other day. Nina could be in there. So could the freak.

“This way,” she said, and they walked down the cavernous hallway, huddled together. Her eye had trouble adjusting to the dimness and judging distances, one of the great annoyances of monocular vision. But the ceiling was mostly buried in shadow, how the master of the house probably liked it. She wished she’d thought to bring a flashlight. The blue flicker grew stronger as they edged down the hallway toward the large set of doors at the end. She could read the words DADDY FUCK MEAT scrawled on the wood with white spray paint.

She gave a grimace. Lovely sentiments. Ramón looked at her again, the shadows pulling his face down into something sad and very afraid. He looked like an old man right now, and she probably didn’t look much better. They stepped into a large bedroom, where the only light seemed to be coming from two of those blue bug zappers, one hanging on the fireplace mantel and the other around the bedpost. A tight network of ropes and cables were strung everywhere, anchored to the walls with thick steel eyebolts. She tweaked one of the ropes with a finger, and it gave a low hum like a guitar string. There was a hammock mounted up in one corner, where he probably liked to sleep or observe his prisoner. It was empty at the moment, though.

The whole party had moved to another part of the house, it seemed. But she couldn’t leave just yet. She had to see where it all happened. The bed itself sagged deeply in the middle, and thick straps hung from the sides, like the kind used to hold unruly patients to their hospital beds before the Thorazine kicked in. The linens were ripped and filthy. A tray with molded bread and fruit sat off to one side. This is where he’d been keeping her, no doubt. How could the girl have survived so long? It seemed like the most vicious sort of karma.

Maybe she didn’t survive. Maybe he killed her after you got away. He sounded pretty angry.

An enormous fireplace dominated one wall, and there was a wingchair in front of it, its back turned to her. There was someone sitting in it. She could see the stiff shoulder of a suit jacket. She didn’t need to see more, but she kept walking, the ever-curious cat with only one life left under its belt. The bug light was weak, but she picked it up and aimed it toward the darkness.

“What are you doing?” Ramón whispered. Squeaked like a frightened mouse was more like it. Ignoring him, she shined the light on the person sitting in the chair.

“Oh my God,” she murmured. “Oh my dear God.” The first thing she saw was the spiked phallus jutting from its lap like some mutant cactus. It was coated in a crust of blood and dried flecks of flesh. She’d only seen the end result, but could never figure out the instrument. Now she knew what had made all those women into unwomen, unable to piss or walk right again. And she’d reaped the rewards without a single thought. Ramón leaned over her shoulder, gazing down at the thing in the blue light. He let out a shaky exhale of breath and sniffed. She didn’t need to see his face to know he was weeping. The Madam didn’t have it in her. Hadn’t she known it would be something like this all along?

“He has ropes tied to his arms,” he said. “Why the hell would he do that?”

Her imagination answered that deftly enough, even though her rational mind couldn’t quite grasp it. “Let’s keep looking.” She turned around and started back toward the door.

“Wait.”

Impatient, she whirled around. “Enough. I’d like to get this done sometime tonight.”

Ramón raised a trembling finger. “Look. That light.”

She looked where he was pointing and didn’t see anything at first. Then she turned her head, and the line of yellow light became visible. There was a thin seam in the wall. Ropes from the ceiling disappeared into it up top. Ramón was already feeling along the wall for a hidden switch of some kind, she supposed. Old houses and their hidden passages. The Willow had a few. She couldn’t imagine what must be hidden back there, but perhaps it was what they’d come for.

“Ah,” he said, and there was a click. The hidden door swung open, revealing a narrow catacomb-like hall bathed in an incandescent glow from caged lights overhead. She and Ramón looked at each other, silently searching for mutual consent. She gave it with a single nod, and her former driver led the way. It was hot, narrow, and smelled faintly of chemicals. Formaldehyde. They rounded the corner into a smallish room, a six-by-eight square, and the Madam saw what was there. Her guts turned to water and she fell against Ramón, who crossed his chest and uttered some Catholic superstition.

They were all here. She would have known them anywhere. These were the girls she’d sent back. The used up ones, the ones who hadn’t turned a much of a profit to begin with, the disposable ones, all made into grotesque dolls. No, that wasn’t quite right. They were puppets, all outfitted with the same series of ropes as the corpse in the wingchair, each sitting on their own little wooden cart, rank and file. Painted on makeup, white eyes glaring at her accusingly from their withered faces. Some of them had their mouths shaped into large circles, like inflatable fuck dolls. She even recognized a few of them from their hair and clothes. Melinda, Jennifer, Chloe, Angel. No Rosie, though. Rosie had enough sense left to check out early on the Willow’s bathroom floor. If the Madam had known this would happen . . .

Ha! Sure, keep telling yourself that. You knew enough. What exactly did you think he’d do with them? Have a slumber party?

“Look there. Behind them,” Ramón said.

It took her a second to tear her eyes away from the puppets, but she did eventually look at the back of the room. There was a black wall. But it wasn’t painted black, no. It was dozens of suitcases, stacked clear to the ceiling. It was difficult to tell how deep, maybe three. She knew those cases well. “Christ,” she muttered. There it was, the whole kit and caboodle. She couldn’t muster the excitement she used to feel when she saw one of those cases sitting on her desk the morning after she sent one of her girls to this place. Now she just felt sick.

“How are we going to get all of this out of here?” he asked. “We take what we can carry, I guess. Unless you want to make multiple trips through . . .”

She didn’t want any of it, not anymore. She wanted to walk right out of here, get into her car, drive to a spot far away and eat the end of the snub-nose currently riding in her pocket. The thought of capering out of here with even a fraction of this misbegotten fortune and then living off it was grotesque. The thought of climbing through a sea of mummified young women to even get to it was even more so.

Ramón put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll do it if you want me to.”

“Do what you want. I’m done.”  She turned to go.

“Hey, wait a minute.” He started to come after her, but she pushed him away.

“We’re sick,” she said. “We’re scum. You know that, don’t you?”

His jaw worked, but no words came out. Before he could say anything more, a high-pitched scream came from the other side of the house, and they both ran. Out of the passage and into the bedroom, out of the bedroom and into the hall. Ramón ran faster, his enormous pistol, which used to be hers, outstretched like some kind of cop movie hero. He was screaming Nina’s name. Blood-curdling screeches followed by thumps. Wood on wood. A door slamming shut over and over again. She followed Ramón into the room and found a bank of light switches on the wall. She flipped them all and a bright fluorescent glow filled the space.

When her vision finally adjusted, she saw Nina on the floor, her back against the door, trying to hold it shut against something pushing on the other side. It was the thing she saw the other day, judging by the snarling and infuriated screams as well as the flashes of pale flesh on the other side. The girl wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer by the look of her. She had been starved to within a millimeter of her life. Blood in various stages of drying covered her thighs and filthy gown. Her screams filled the space like cawing, tortured crows. How on God’s green earth could she still be alive?

“Nina, move! Get down!” Ramón shouted.

She looked at them, a mask of pure wonder dawning over the madness on her face. The door pushed open again, and Nina fell to the floor. A translucent ghoul with enormous black eyes and a tumorous growth between them emerged, its mouth a gaping hole filled with pointed teeth. It leapt at them, and the Madam stumbled back screaming, “Shoot it! Shoot the goddamn thing!”

The thunder of gunfire filled the room and the thing’s head dissolved into a mist of blood and poisoned meat. But the screeching didn’t stop. It took the Madam a moment to realize the sound wasn’t coming from the thing. It was coming from Nina.

Chapter 20

Nina Sheds Her Burden

He pushed the spoon toward her mouth. “Come on, you need to get some food in you.”

She didn’t want it. Her lips and tongue hurt, and the memory of why turned her stomach, but she sipped what was there so he would get it out of her face.

“Enough,” she muttered, sitting up and pulling the blanket to her chest. She just wanted to sleep, but she gazed out the back window at the flat empty fields already asleep for the winter. She could go anywhere in the world, but the Midwest would never be able to disguise itself. “We’re getting close.”

Ramón put the lid back on the carton of soup. “Yeah. We’ll be in Illinois soon. I’d say another six hours total, and you’ll be home. Then I’ll help you find a doctor.” He’d stopped trying to convince her to go to the hospital. The thought of lying in another bed with tubes going into her while some stranger poked and prodded her was enough to make her throat close up. But eventually she would have to go. There was a baby to consider, if there even was a baby anymore. She didn’t tell Ramón that part. It would have only made him more insistent.

“Your mom said she had a bed waiting. I think she’s looking forward to caring for you.”

Nina rolled her eyes. Janie Quick was looking forward to having someone to control again. The woman had been holding roost in her head for so long it felt like no time had passed since she left the dingy old trailer for bigger and better things. She’d found bigger things. The better had been elusive.

Ramón stepped out of the backseat and moved back behind the wheel and started the car. Soon they were back on the highway heading due west toward the setting sun. She didn’t think she could see enough yellow, pink, and orange. When she got home, she intended to paint the trailer in all those colors, damn Janie’s protests.

She tried in vain to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes, she was certain she would wake up bathed in blue light, Junior looking down on her with his strange black eyes. Finally, she sat up. Ramón her driver again, this time across half the country to deliver her to another tyrant. A loving tyrant, but a tyrant nonetheless, with invisible strings instead of literal ones. She wondered if she would ever be free of them.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

He didn’t answer for a while, but she saw his eyes in the rearview mirror and knew he was thinking about it. She had only learned a few things about where he went after he left her with the freak, but she’d been in and out of consciousness a lot the first couple days. She remembered him mentioning Atlantic City and someone named Jessie.

“It’s a big country,” he said. “I guess I’ll keep going until a place feels right.”

“That’s what I should have done. I should have taken one look at New York City and kept on moving. It never felt right.”

“How do you feel about where we’re going now?”

“Safe. For the moment. I guess at some point, I’ll start remembering all the reasons I left in the first place. My mother has that effect on people.”

“You can never go home again. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”

“I guess. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been there.” She leaned back again, stretching her legs across the long backseat. Sleep finally took her, at least for a little while.

***

She awoke with a start. It was dark, except for a dim blue light, and her heart squeezed painfully in her chest. Then the beams from passing headlights briefly illuminated her surroundings and she breathed again.

“You okay?” Ramón asked.

“How close are we?”

“We’re in Iowa. Maybe an hour or two left to go.”

“Can we stop somewhere for the night?”

“Seriously?”

How could she tell him she didn’t want to see her mom’s old rustbucket trailer at night? It would be surrounded by fallen leaves and dead grass. Janie Quick’s voice would fill her head in the dark, the way it did all those nights she lay strapped to Ballas’ bed. Too much, too soon.

“I’m not ready,” she said. “Just one more night. We’ll go first thing in the morning. I promise.”

“All right. I’ll pull off at the next exit and find a place. Then we’ll call your mom and let her know.”

“Thank you.”

Twenty minutes later, they were checked into an Econolodge an hour outside Des Moines. Ramón had asked her if she wanted her own room, but seeing the look of stricken terror on her face, he told the clerk behind the counter a double queen would be fine. She stood in the room and watched him bring their bags in. There wasn’t much. A duffel for her filled with some clothes they picked up at a Wal-Mart in Connecticut, his own bag, and the black suitcases that made her heart lurch just looking at them. She didn’t want the money, but want didn’t really have anything to do with it. They needed it, and it had been there for the taking. Ramón had said that there were a lot of cases in that special hidden room, and they were still there. Would be until someone finally discovered the horrors inside the Ballas Manor and knew where to look, but they took only what they could carry in one trip. They were going to divide it up evenly. She guessed there was close to a million bucks there. “At least you won’t have to worry about going to work right away. It’ll help pay your medical bills. Maybe buy your mom a new trailer,” he’d said, and she couldn’t really argue with that, though she didn’t think she’d tell Janie about it right away. The woman was nothing if not greedy.

After he had the bags in, he closed the door and locked it. “Which bed do you want?” he asked.

“Take your pick.” Truth was, she didn’t want either of them. Would be fine for the rest of her life if she didn’t have to lie in another bed again. She wondered if she could learn how to sleep standing up. He sat down on the bed closest to the bathroom and took off his shoes.

“Do you need to use the restroom at all? Shower?” he asked.

She did need to use the bathroom. Had been holding it for a while, in fact. She wasn’t very good at it. The muscles down there were ruined, and leaking urine had become a fact of her life for a while now. She wore big bulky pads to catch it and they made her feel like an old woman.

“Maybe I’ll take a shower,” she said, picking up her bag and carrying it to the bathroom.

Sterile light bathed the tiny space, consisting of nothing more than a white toilet and a matching shower. Stiff white towels sat in a stack on the metal shelf. Everything was white and clean. Her stomach cramped, and she slowly pulled down her pants to check the pad in her underwear. It was soaked with blood. Not a lot. It was like having her period. Her stomach cramped again and she began to shake.

It’s okay. This is good, she thought. All for the best.

She would not look at herself down there, and probably never would for the rest of her life. She knew she was ruined. The wounds may have healed over, but the damage was done. But her body seemed to be doing her one final solid, expelling whatever might be living in there so she wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of having someone else do it for her. Another cramp, this time strong enough to make her lean against the wall. When it passed, she drew herself a shower as hot as she could make it and climbed into the tub.

The water fell over her, its cleansing heat carrying her away from her thoughts for a while as her body did its work. She watched the red stream swirl with eddies of water flowing between her legs, turning pink as it raced for the drain. After one more cramp, this one enough to make her cry out, she expelled a large clot, this one the size of a small fist. She stared at it and thought she could see its form amid the congealed mass. It was translucent. Nubs for arms and legs. But maybe her mind was making her see things.

It was too heavy to move with the current, and it wouldn’t fit down the drain. She reached out and pulled a large wad of toilet paper off the roll and used it to pick up what was there. Into the toilet it went. She flushed and watched the whirlpool carry it away. There was a knock on the door.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” she said. And that was sort of true. Or it would be.

Eventually the bleeding slowed to a trickle, the cramps subsided to a dull ache. She stepped out of the shower and dried off. The towel came away pink where she dared blot between her legs.

***

The next morning, Ramón divided the money and put her half into the duffle bag among her clothes and things. It was a lot heavier now, but she thought she could manage it. They ate breakfast at a greasy spoon and then hit the road. The sun was behind them this time, and she lost herself in the pink and orange streaks signaling the coming day. An hour later, they pulled into the packed dirt driveway of Janie Quick’s trailer. Nothing changed but the blooms of rust on the old and dirty aluminum. Those had grown bigger.

“Do you want me to help you inside?” he asked.

“I’ve got it.” She didn’t want Janie to see Ramón and judge. She always judged.

“You’re going to be okay. One day at a time.”

Until she wasn’t going to be okay. No one stayed okay for long. At some point, they had to move on to keep from losing their minds. “Maybe so,” she said. An easy enough lie.

She opened the door and felt his hand on her shoulder. She turned to look at him. His eyes were big and watery and sad. Old. “I’m sorry, Nina. If I’d listened when you first said—”

She put her hand on his mouth. “Don’t. You said all I ever needed to hear. You probably have a lot to be sorry for. We all do. I think we’ll all live longer if we pretend the sorrys make it to the people we send them out to every night, when we lay in bed regretting every bad thing we ever did.” She leaned over and kissed his rough cheek before getting out of the car. He sat there, the engine of the old Buick idling, before she waved him on.

For what would probably be the last time in her life, she watched him drive away.

***

Janie glanced away from the tiny TV for a second when Nina walked in. No hug, no tearful reunion. It seemed like everything, from the perpetual talk shows to the old appliances and the dishes in the sink, had been frozen in time since Nina fled in the dead of night to catch a bus to Manhattan an eon ago. Janie herself looked fatter, though. Arthritis had turned her fingers into sausages.

“Bed’s all made up for ya. After you get settled in, help yourself to a frozen pizza or something.”

“Thanks.”

“You look terrible. Like the wide world bit ya right in the ass and came back for seconds.”

“Back atcha, Janie.”

Nina headed down the narrow hallway to her old bedroom as Janie called after her. “Welcome to adulthood, dearie. You start work on Monday.”

With the door mercifully shut behind her, Nina gazed at the tiny square of space she once covered in posters of her favorite singers. All of those were gone, save for the corner where one still stuck to the wall under its original strip of tape. The Cure. She sure could use one right about now. The place where her books used to be was replaced by stacks of boxes carelessly pushed aside to make room for a cot. There wasn’t even a place to put her bags.

This won’t do, you know. None of you is left in here.

Not Janie Quick’s voice this time, but someone else’s. The Madam’s. The last time she saw the woman was outside the house. The two of them had little to say to one another. Nina was incapable of speaking much at all, but the Madam looked drained of all life. The Ballas house had turned her mute like it had to all the women who’d crossed its threshold. But Nina wanted to give her something she’d taken before Ramón herded both of them out. The stiletto hair pin had pulled easily enough out of Kali’s eye socket. Nina wiped the gore off on her nightgown and handed it over.

“This is yours. You want it back?”

The Madam had regarded it silently for a moment and then shook her head. “Keep it. I have no use for those anymore.” Then she pulled the remaining one out of her hair and handed it to her. “They work better in pairs.”

Now Nina pulled the hairpins out of her duffel bag and clutched them in her hand. The cold metal made her feel more in control. I killed someone with this. I can do it again if I have to.

Janie called out from the living room. “You gonna hibernate in there all damn night, or are ya gonna come out here and make us some lunch? It ain’t a flophouse, sweetheart.”

Nina eyeballed the bag of money. A half-million bucks, all hers. She could go anywhere on that money. Do anything. She’d never have to take anyone’s orders ever again. Nina placed the pin in her hair, just as the Madam had worn it in hers. Within easy reach to deal with anyone who fucked with her. She wouldn’t bother unpacking her things. Des Moines always felt like a pit stop in her life, and that would never change.

Chapter 21

Ramón in the Meadows

Nina’s last words replayed in his mind long after he pulled back onto the interstate heading west. No particular reason why, other than it would take him farther away from where he’d come. He hoped the girl would make it, but he got one look at the place he’d left her and knew she wouldn’t be long for it. But maybe that was okay. Maybe she’d head in the right direction this time. East had done her no good, but there were other directions on the compass, and the money would take her far. He could only hope it would take her somewhere better this time.

The Madam remained true to her convictions and didn’t take a dime of the Ballas money. After she helped get Nina to his car, she went to her own and drove off, direction unknown. He couldn’t imagine she got very far on what she had, but she wasn’t his problem anymore.

He drove until the cheap coffee couldn’t hold his eyes open anymore and then would stop at the nearest rest area, just long enough to sleep a few hours behind the wheel, doors locked, hands wrapped around the handle of the pistol he’d used to kill the thing now rotting some fifteen hundred miles behind him. Then he would wake up and keep driving, waiting until he heard a voice telling him where to go. The corn gave way to wheat. The wheat gave way to desert scrub. Then the voice came. First as a whisper, and then as a steady, predictable chant he couldn’t ignore, calling to the monster inside him that wouldn’t die until he did.

What did it matter? He was about as free as a man could get in this world, which is all he’d really ever wanted.

Las Vegas had changed a lot since he’d last visited back in the eighties, back before Maria had met the real man she married, when cards were just cards and chips were just novel pieces of plastic. Families now walked the strip in droves, taking pictures of themselves in front of replicas of famous world landmarks they would probably never venture to see in person. False dreams constructed with cheap steel. But that was good enough for him.

He stopped first at a men’s clothing store and bought himself a suit and a new pair of shoes. Nothing too fancy, but still nice. Something that made him feel new and would signal to everyone else that he wasn’t a nobody. He chose a deep purple shirt and a tie with modern print. The store clerk said it made him look ten years younger, for whatever that was worth. His hair was coming back in, but he decided to let it grow. He’d been bald long enough. The desert got cold at night this time of year, and he might be here for a little while.

He checked into the MGM Grand and asked for a suite. The young receptionist didn’t blink when he paid for a week upfront with cash. High rollers were a dime a dozen in this town. So were fools parting too soon with their ill-gotten riches, but if things worked out, he would see about finding a place that would let him stretch his dollars a little more. After settling into his room, he took the Magnum out of the duffel bag and spun the cylinder. Plenty of bullets, but he would only need one when the time came. Depending on his luck, it could be tomorrow or a month from now. He didn’t so much care when, really. He was riding the wind. After pushing the cylinder back in, liking the little click it made when it snapped into place, he put it back into the bottom of his bag and left.

He rode the elevator down to the ground floor and went where his nose led him, like a dog straight to fresh meat. The sentinels he’d long ago placed at the gates to contain the hungry monster in his soul were growing sleepy, and he didn’t bother to wake them this time. Maybe they would die there, and that would be okay too.

Blind three-card poker sounded like a good way to get his feet wet. He liked the idea of throwing it all to fate. The croupier was a young man, about Alejandro’s age. Then again, he thought all men were like his son. Ramón sat down next to a pretty brunette in a red dress. A pink cocktail sat off to the side with lipstick on the rim. She glanced at him and smiled. He returned it, already formulating the story in his mind of who he was, in case she asked. And he hoped she would. He was back in his true element, ready to play.

“Good evening, sir,” said the young dealer in the black vest behind the table.

“Same to you,” said Ramón. Or maybe he would be Lionel from now on. It was a nice name. Strong. He placed five hundred dollars on the green felt and watched the magician turn them into plastic coins.

Chapter 22

Madam in the Boathouse

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a department store, at least the kind where people pushed plastic carts with screaming babies up and down wide aisles stuffed with cheap Chinese crap. But the place comforted her in a way she never would have expected. It felt normal here. Safe. After cleaning herself up in the mercifully deserted bathroom, she wandered up and down each aisle, touching everything as she went by, absorbing the ambient sounds of footsteps, rolling wheels, beeps, and murmurs. There were linens and dishes on closeout, twenty dollar toasters, slacks on sale for $14.99, DVDs of movies she’d never seen, five bucks each. She hadn’t come here for any of it. Couldn’t afford it, anyway. She was a pauper now, one small step away from a life of soup kitchens.

With the remaining money in her pocket, she purchased a plastic chess set, a bottle of cheap red wine—no Wild Irish Rose at this fine establishment, sorry, Dante—and a pack of Camels. The sleepy looking checker didn’t make eye contact, but maybe he was trying to be polite. Nobody knows how to look at someone with one eye.

With her purchases tucked safe in their slick plastic sack, she drove to the family estate, taking the back way to avoid being spotted by the dozens of goons and goons-in-training who were likely keeping vigil there, mourning the untimely death of their patriarch. She doubted they’d identified his crispy corpse yet, but they knew he was dead. Families like hers always knew.

The Maserati wasn’t built to travel on old logging roads, but it handled itself okay and she wouldn’t have to go too far. The path leading to the lake was just ahead. She knew these grounds like the back of her hand. When she hadn’t been in the boathouse with Dante, she’d wandered among the trees and scrub. Some of the old oaks and maples she’d tied with ribbons, giving them names. Somehow that made talking to them less strange. Trees were good at holding secrets.

She parked the car and got out, taking her plastic bag with her. The little revolver she’d pulled out of Victor’s glove compartment the previous night still rode along in her pocket. She didn’t anticipate running into much trouble out here, but it was good to be cautious. The comforting smells of fall filled her nose as she kicked up drifts of orange and yellow leaves littering the path. Birds greeted the morning all around her, declaring their refusal to depart for warmer weather. The lack of foliage on the trees made it easier to see the pristine lake up ahead. She could also see the sloping roof of the Cassini abode way on the other side, but the place she was looking for was much smaller, and it was sitting across the water straight ahead.

Another path branched off from this one, circumnavigating the water, and she took it, being wary of the nettles that still grew, defying the cold weather. Eventually she exited the woods and entered high grasses. She was on open ground now, and she supposed if anyone up at the house was watching, they would see her and sound the alarm, but it was early, and almost no one ventured down this way. This was Dante’s place. This was also his wife’s place, or at least the place she took her own life. The Madam was surprised Victor hadn’t torn it down once he took the estate, if nothing just to spite her, but she supposed even monsters held some sort of reverence for sacred ground. Maybe he was afraid of the spiritual repercussions. Victor had been strangely superstitious, though it didn’t do him much good in the end.

She finally reached the rickety old dock and stepped up. The wood was rotting away, but it held her. Not that there was much of her left to hold. The door wasn’t locked, and its hinges squeaked when she opened it. Air, thick with the smell of old wood and a tinge of mildew greeted her. But there was something else beneath that, likely brought on by the power of her memories of this place. It was the cheap aftershave Dante wore to punish himself, much like the old flannel and cheap bag wine.

The old aluminum fishing boat still clung to its mooring by a length of rotting rope. The table was in its usual spot too, and she walked over to it. The painted on chess grid was faded to near invisibility, but she could see it clearly enough. Would probably be able to see it if it wasn’t there at all. The pattern was etched permanently into her memory.

She screwed the cap off the bottle of wine—no cork—and set it on Dante’s side of the table. Same with the Camels, though she helped herself to one of those. She wasn’t a child anymore. Finally, she opened the chess set, pulling out the pawns and setting them in their proper ranks on the worn wood. Dante would have hated the cheap plastic, but the original pewter set was probably so much melted mess in the ashes of the whorehouse he’d left her to run. Just as well.

The cheap playing board remained in the box, along with the queens. She took the liberty of sacrificing them ahead of time. Leveling the playing field, finding strength in weakness. Dante would have approved. “I have white,” she said. “First-move advantage.”

She moved her pawn to e4 and waited a minute before making her father’s move.

THE END

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Allison M. Dickson is a writer of dark contemporary fiction. She has several short stories available on Amazon, and two of them appearing in The Endlands Volume 2 from Hobbes End Publishing. Strings is her debut novel, with her next book, a dystopian science-fiction tale called The Last Supper, releasing in 2014. When she's not writing, she's co-hosting a weekly podcast, Creative Commoners. She was born in Oxford, OH and spent several years in the Pacific Northwest before returning to live in Dayton, OH with her husband Ken and her two kids, Natalie and Elias.

For more works by Allison M. Dickson, visit her website:

http://www.allisonmdickson.com

Table of Contents

- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- A Note from the Author
- Junior
- Chapter 1 Nina’s Last Trick
- Chapter 2 Ramón Takes a Detour
- Chapter 3 Madam’s Family Ties
- Chapter 4 Nina Dances
- Chapter 5 Ramón and the Derringer
- Chapter 6 Madam’s Punishment
- Chapter 7 Nina and the Woman in Red
- Chapter 8 Ramón’s Bond
- Chapter 9 Madam Makes an Ally
- Chapter 10 Nina’s Passenger
- Chapter 11 Ramón in the Nile
- Chapter 12 Madam in the Mirror
- Chapter 13 Nina’s Lesson in Purity
- Chapter 14 The Ballad of Jenkins
- Chapter 15 Ramón and the Honey Trap
- Chapter 16 Madam Sacrifices Her Queen
- Chapter 17 Nina’s Declaration
- Chapter 18 Ramón and the Madam
- Chapter 19 Madam and the Good Girls
- Chapter 20 Nina Sheds Her Burden
- Chapter 21 Ramón in the Meadows
- Chapter 22 Madam in the Boathouse
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR