Keeping the gun aimed at his head, I backed toward the door and kicked it closed with my foot. Reaching behind me, I found the dead bolt and locked it. Neither Marcus nor the bouncer made any move toward me while I was standing next to them. They were too busy bleeding out onto the hideous orange carpet and matching couch. Having bought myself a few extra minutes, I marched back across the room, grabbed a hold of Leon’s shirt with one hand and yanked him out of his chair, which kicked backward and toppled over. I pinned him against the wall and drove the gun barrel into the side of his head. His own pudgy hands stayed where they were the entire time. Next to his ears, palms out, shaking.
“Wha—what the f—fuck is wrong with you?” he stammered.
“No no,” I said through gritted teeth. “I ask the questions, not you. The people you set me up with, your referral. Who are they?”
“What?” he asked, eyes wide.
I pressed the barrel harder against his temple. He recoiled from the pressure, so I pulled him back and slammed him against the wall. A framed picture of he and several players from the Anderlecht soccer team fell off and shattered on the ground. One of the stitches popped beneath the crisscrossed Band-Aids on my damaged finger. I didn’t feel it.
“Who are they?” It was getting harder not to shout, but I didn’t want to lose my cool. The two men writhing on the ground ten feet behind me were the first I’d ever shot in my life, and it had been far easier than I’d anticipated. Far easier than I was comfortable admitting. I had a feeling that the third would be even easier if I wasn’t careful. And tempting though it was, Leon did nothing for me dead.
“I—I don’t know,” he said. Sweat leaked from every pore, mixing with whatever cheap cologne he bathed in that morning. The resulting smell was a repugnant blend of musky sweetness.
I took the gun away from his head, pointed it toward the wall three inches from his left ear and fired a shot. He screamed louder than either of his employees who actually took a bullet earlier and covered his ear with his hand. The other remained in its quivering, upright position. His screams quickly turned to cries, and tears began to seep from behind his closed eyelids.
Good, I thought. This is what happens when you fuck with my family, you greasy little bitch.
Except it wasn’t Leon who had put my family in danger. But I couldn’t get my hands on Trish at the moment, and beating up myself never felt this good.
It feels a little too good, though, doesn’t it? You’re slipping, Rick.
I was. But there would be time for moral quandaries later. First, I needed answers.
His left ear was ringing and useless, so I replaced the gun against his temple and leaned close to his right. “Don’t fuck with me right now, Leon,” I said. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know, I swear! I only started working with them six months ago. They wanted girls, lots of them, so they came to me. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m known for. What, was I going to say no?”
“Who was your contact?”
“He never gave me his name. Brown hair, maybe thirty. Shorter than you. He had a tattoo on his neck.”
I thought of my conversation with Freddie.
“What did it look like?” I demanded.
“I don’t know, some kind of Chinese symbol or something.”
Son of a bitch.
“Was he Chinese?” I asked.
“No, he was normal.”
I rolled my eyes at the casual racism and smacked him in his bad ear with the gun.
“Ow, Jesus Christ, Rick!” he shouted.
“How did he pay you?”
“Cash. Every time, cash. A lot of it. I couldn’t say no.”
“How many times?”
“Five, maybe six. About once a month.”
“How many girls?”
“Ten, sometimes twelve.”
“All at once? Do you even have that many girls on your payroll?”
“No, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t want dancers, he wanted girls.”
It didn’t register at first, but when it did the last levee against my boiling anger broke. An image of Denise, dirty and abused, being sold at auction to some wealthy sexual predator, flashed across my mind’s eye.
An image of Maggie.
I pulled Leon away from the wall and slammed him flat against the desk. The edge caught him in his lower back and he bent awkwardly at the waist. His legs went limp and I pressed the gun so hard against his head that it flattened his cheek against the busted keyboard.
“You fucking sick piece of shit,” I spat. Literally. Flecks of saliva splattered on his flushed face. “How old were they? Did you even care?”
“NO!” he cried. “No, Rick it wasn’t like that, I swear!”
“Oh really? What was it like, huh? When you said you got them ‘girls,’ what exactly did you mean?”
“I mean I got them girls, but not girls like that. Women, not strippers. The kind rich guys buy for themselves. But they were all of age, Rick, I swear. Every single one of them.” His eyes were hopeful, begging me to understand that it wasn’t a big deal.
So that’s what my world had come to in a few short hours. A place where sex trafficking instead of outright pedophilia was considered a silver lining.
