Black Bear Rising: A BWWM Paranormal Romance (Black Bear Saga Book 1) (18 page)

The drugs coursed through Lana's body jacking her mind into over drive. Her words came out fluidly in a steady stream and she could feel her growing connection to Gus expand and engulf her at an accelerated pace. Thoughts flipped and flicked through her mind, blasting down her flooded synapses at a sped up pace. The people inside the gallery looked slow and cumbersome to her. She gulped down the last of her Champagne and the bubbly liquid gold mixed with the acrid taste of coke back wash and it made her fingers tingle.
 

Lana spoke after what she thought was an eternity of time but which was no more then a few scant seconds, “Holy shit that is some good stuff.”

“I get only the best. Life is too short to live off the scraps,” He said.

“I can barely even afford the scraps,” Lana said with snort.

“Unemployed?” he asked.

“Worse. I’m in college and my only source of funds is about to dry up,” she said.

“Won’t your parents help you?” he asked.

“They are the source of my problems,” Lana said waving her hand in the air, “My father has got himself into some problems in work and my college tuition is the first thing on the chopping block. To be honest he has fucked our whole family over.”

“Ugh fathers, aren't they the worst. I can help you out a little if you are cash poor at the moment. I run a side business that an attractive girl like you might be interested in,” Gus tapped his pocket, “another hit?”

Lana obliged him and said, “Go on.”

“I meet with a lot or rich men in the art world, rich and lonely. Their wives are usually withholding the goods or absorbed with some save the indigenous brown people charity, leaving the husbands to live out a lonely life. These men I know pay top money to spend the night with a young and attractive girl who will listen to their boring anecdotes, laugh in all the right places and generally massage their old and withered egos.”

Lana raised her hand to stop him talking and said, “Hold on a minute, are you trying to sell me on prostitution?”

Gus smiled and took another deep puff on his cigar. The glowing red tip danced in the chilling night air as he gesticulated while speaking. “Look we are both adults here. Sometimes my ladies have nothing more then a fancy dinner, some cocktails and maybe a gent who gets a little too hands on. Not all nights end in sex. If you are comfortable with it, sex can be part of the deal. These are men that I have personally vetted, they are not some sort of gutter rats. Men at these levels want nothing but utmost discretion in these kinds of matters. They are cash rich and time poor, give them a night to remember and most of the time they lavish the girls with gifts.”

“What does that make you then? Are you the pimp?”

Gus smiled and said, “That word is so dirty, it belongs in a seventies exploitation movie. I’m a facilitator, a conduit between two worlds that can never mix in the bright glare of day. I keep a well oiled machine purring along below the surface of society, bankers, artists, ceo’s they all come to me and I provide for them. And so the wheels of capitalism keep on turning. The safety of my girls and clients is of utmost importance. The prices I charge keeps it to only the most primo of clients.”

“Let me guess, you take a sizeable cut from the girls earnings?”

“I do do the leg work, maintain the network of anonymity so a twenty five percent share doesn’t seem too bad to me.”

“What kind of money do your girls earn. I’m curious nothing more,” Lana said.

“Laugh at his jokes, have a fancy dinner and a few hours spent over cocktails and you can expect around one thousand dollars. Spend the night with him and you can easily bank on five, all depending on what you get up to. Everything is prearranged through me, nothing unplanned or unexpected can happen and if you ever feel uncomfortable you can walk from the night and my employ. You decide how much you want to make in any given month. I have several girls, some who have gone on to be doctors, one who you would recognise from TV, another is the CEO of a well known company. These women have paid their way through college and stepped out the door with a crisp new degree and zero debts. Its a hell of a way to kick start your life. Anyway thats enough of the hard sell. Take my card and if you are even a tiny bit interested call me and we can talk it over. At the very least you could have a dinner with some sad sack ceo who hasn't talked to a pretty woman in years and end up pocketing a grand for your time. Think it over.” He slid his card into her hand, gently squeezed it and left in a cloud of fragrant cigar smoke.

It took Lana two weeks before she worked up the courage to call him, by then she had dodged a number of emails from the college admins office regarding tuition fee cheques bouncing. Lana swore to herself that if she felt even a tiny bit uncomfortable she would back out of any situation she found herself in. She could feel the hungry and unforgiving jaws of desperation snapping their yellowed teeth close by and with every passing day they grew closer to their quarry.

After her fateful call to Gus she was on her first night out with a client a few days later.

Lana pressed the buzzer again. She wasn't even sure if it was connected to anything and was about to walk away when the tiny intercom speaker crackled into life.

“Speak,” said the voice through a layer of crunchy static.

“Lana and Sara, we need to talk.”

The voice crackled again and said, “Five minutes and then I’ll buzz you up.”

Lana and Sara huddled in a doorway trying to avoid the chill wind that was blowing past them and whipping up styrofoam cups and other detritus into a series of duelling whirling dervish eddies in the corner where this building connected to a disused paper mill. Gus lived in the loft space in what was once a factory that made casual wear for the retired set. The business soon closed when someone cottoned on to the fact that the same garments could be made for a fraction of the cost in China. The top floor had been converted in to a bright and airy loft and the wide open work floor had dozens of tiny sectioned off spaces where artists, playwrights, anarchists, and startups all worked there with a jerry rigged electrical system piggy backing off a disused tyre factory connection that was somehow still operational after over a decade of being closed.

Lana hooked her arm around Sara and pulled her close for some warmth.

“We are going to be ok. Gus will know what to do,” Lana said, more to try to reassure herself than anything else.

The intercom crackled into life and a voice said, “Come in.”

The door buzzed and Lana and Sara entered and closed the heavy steel door behind them. Lights were strung by heavy cables across the high ceiling and dust danced in a beam of light coming through a wiped off hole in the soaped up windows. High speed Korean rap blasted from one of the make shift structures that housed a transgender art collective. Lana had spoken to one of its members, an impossibly tall and delicately boned woman called Drusalia, a few times while waiting to go up to see Gus. A sheet of heavy black tarp was thrown back from the entrance and Drusalia was at a table working on a sculpture. She waved and gave the peace sign to Lana and Sara and then retreated back into her art space.

Heavy boots clunked on the steps as they came down the spiral staircase that led up to the loft apartment. Two boys hardly older then sixteen both of whom still had a flash of angry acne on their faces made their way down the stairs. They dressed how they looked, angry, distant and ready to flip out without any kind of provocation. They walked past Lana and Sara without even acknowledging them, a smell of acrid sweat and cheap cologne lingering in the air after them.

The two women climbed the stairs. Gus was waiting on the top of the staircase dressed in a flowing silk dressing gown with images of supplicant geishas screen printed on it. He chomped on one of his unlit oversized cigars and nodded for them to enter his loft space.

The place had floor length windows on all sides with views of empty and crumbling factories every way you turned. In the middle of the floor sat a bed raised up on some concrete blocks, a tub of lube and a laptop playing some hardcore gay porn. In the far corner was a cruddy brown couch, a mini fridge, a stack of books on the floor and an open suitcase which looked to be filled with mostly silk gowns. The stripped down aesthetic did not fit with how Gus engaged with the world, it was like seeing a beautiful bird of paradise riding the subway. Lana suspected he only used this place for fucking and doing business.

“What can I do for you beautiful ladies?” Gus asked as he sat on the couch of questionable origin, “Are you looking for more work already? You know for my two star college kids there is always something on the books.”

“We need you to see something,” Sara said.

Gus could see by their grave expressions that this wasn't going to be a lighthearted visit.

“Show me,” he said.

Lana gave him the memory card from her camera and Gus got up and got the laptop. He balanced it on the arm of the couch and inserted the memory card into his laptop and hit play. As the opening images unfolded he hit a key and stopped the video.

“You taped yourself with a client? What the hell were you thinking, do you know what the fuck could happen to me or you if anyone ever found out you did this?”

“This was the first time. I swear Gus. I had real bad feeling about this job. I was going to delete it right away, until…” She trailed off.

Gus sat in silence as the video unfolded before him. The muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched as the grey haired man squeezed the life out of the unconscious younger man. He closed the laptop with a snap when it ended and rubbed his temples.

“Do you know who the grey haired man is?” Sara asked.

“He’s some bigwig for a company that makes some kind of computer chip or something else electronic. Thats all I know. It was his first time using my service, someone I trusted had vouched for him. I’ll deal with this creep, his days of drawing breath are numbered. Look girls, leave the memory card with me. Something will be done and the less you know the better.” He reached under the couch and pulled out a metal foot locker. He popped the lid and drew out a bundle of crisp notes and handed it to Lana.

“Here take this, buy some clothes and party over the weekend all on me. You know I have the safety of my girls as a priority.”

Lana pocketed the wad and said, “What about the guy who was killed did you know him? Was he one of yours?”

“Never seen him until now. Put this horrible thing in your rear view window. It will be taken care of.”

“We have both been talking and we are not so sure if we really want to continue taking escort jobs,” Sara said.

“Look don’t make any rash decisions now, take a week off to relax, blow some of your money and have a good time. Really think it over before you decide to pack it all in. Is this the only copy?” he asked.

Lana lied and said,” Yes.” She could feel the skin at the nape of her neck prickle as Gus locked eyes with her for a moment that felt a beat too long. He knows you are lying she thought to herself.

“Ok good. Let me hang on to this. I know who to show this to to get the mess cleaned up. Leave it all to me.”

“Are you going to have him killed?” Sara asked him.

“Its best that both of you know as little as possible. Now go, relax, go shopping and have a few strong cocktails. You can trust Gus to take care of this, I’ve always had your backs,”

They got up to leave and Gus hugged each of them as they headed for the door. As Lana slid the door shut Gus shouted out to them, “You did good bringing this to me. Everything is going to be alright.” The door slid shut with a heavy metallic click and they headed back out into the biting wind.

Gus paced up and down holding the memory card in front of his eyes between thumb and forefinger. Then he pocketed it and got down on his hands and knees and pulled out a locked metal box from under the couch. He opened it with a key on a thick gold chain around his neck. Inside the box was a flip phone with a credit card attached to it with a thick rubber band, a charger for the phone and three passports. He flipped open the phone and threw the card into the box. The phone switched on and Gus scrolled to the address book. It contained one number and no name. He hit the dial button. After three ring tones his call was answered.

“I know, I know,” he said to the voice on the other end as beads of sweat formed a sheen on his forehead. He nodded as the voice continued to speak.

“We have a problem. Yes serious,” Gus said. He could feel beads of cold sweat running down his back as the voice relayed instructions.

“You are coming here? Ok,” he said and hung up. Gus sat back on his couch soaked in a cold oily sweat. He cursed aloud in Cuban and thought about his homeland for the first time in a long time. “It is done,” he whispered to himself as he stared at nothing in particular.

Brad Johnson stood looking at the noticeboard situated directly across the quad from the brownstone dorm building. He had been standing there for two minutes now browsing the flyers for bands needing singers, bikes for sale and car sharing offers, in that time no one had entered or left the dorm building he was watching. It was the middle of the afternoon and he hoped most students would be in class. His instructions were simple, break in to Lana's and Sara's room, grab their laptops, plant the drugs and get out. He’d done similar things a hundred times before, this time the ball of tension in his stomach made him doubt himself. Two young girls were going to get a sharp shock when they awoke tomorrow morning to boots kicking down their doors and then getting hauled out in handcuffs. Whats the alternative he thought, a bullet to the back of the head as they walk home from a party? Disgrace and jail time and probably a shortened sentence if they were first timers was better then the alternative Brad had seen doled out before. Something didn't feel completely right to Brad like a splinter under his fingernail it was a minor annoyance now but could become infected and cause more problems later on, why let the girls live at all he wondered.