Enforcer (10 page)

“You are right,” Petre said. “It is not normal for you. Try to not think of it. Play hard. Work hard. Fuck hard. This—” Petre pointed at the empty bottles on the floor and counter—“will not make you forget. You will only remember more. Trust me. I have tried this already.”

“Trust you,” Connor sneered. “Trust a killer of women and children? Go fuck yourself.”

“Connor, prietenul meu.”
You are my friend
. “I tell you these things because you are not a killer. I am unhappy that you had to do last night. But it is done. I tell you so you will know. Life is hard. You know this. Look at your leg. Life is full of hard. You must keep going forward, not behind.”

“Gee, thanks,” Connor said. “Great advice from a kil—”

Connor rolled over and dry-heaved again, unable to finish his sentence. He had been completely wasted before, too many times, but he had never hit the bottle as hard as he had in the last twenty-four hours. As his stomach contracted, forcing nothing but bile up into his mouth, he wondered if he was trying to kill himself.

When his stomach stopped revolting, he tried to get up again, but couldn’t even lift himself up on one elbow. He laid on the floor, the room spinning, seeing three Petres. He closed his eyes, thankfully seeing nothing instead of Travis Benkula’s face. He’d finally drank enough to not see the rope cutting into Travis’s neck, Dracul’s black gloves holding on to the ends of the white nylon.

*****

Petre watched him for a while, torn between his loyalty to Mr. Ojacarcu and his friendship with the young athlete. Petre was in no position to help beyond talking to Connor, trying to help him understand what was happening, trying to make it smoother, easier for his friend to cope with it.

He remembered the first time he’d killed a man. He’d been fourteen, running the streets of Arad at night. A man, a queer, had propositioned him as he walked by the alley between two buildings. Petre had agreed, walking deeper into the shadows until the queer stopped him. Petre had grabbed the man’s cock as if he were going to stroke it. Just as the queer put his head back against the wall to enjoy it, Petre pulled out a knife and hacked at the queer’s cock until blood showered them both.

The man died within seconds, and Petre had walked out of the alley with almost a thousand leu. Three hundred American dollars worth of blood, shit, and guilt. He’d made his way back to the apartment that Mr. Rohozeanu kept for his lieutenants and their crews, avoiding police and citizens alike, soaked in the queer’s blood.

When he arrived at the apartment, his lieutenant questioned him, afraid that Petre was hurt. When Petre explained where the blood came from, his lieutenant, Stefan, laughed like never before. Stefan called all of the crews to the apartment, and had Petre recount the story again. When he described how he’d cut the queer’s cock off and the man had bled to death in seconds, everyone cheered and laughed, and agreed that it was a terrible way to die.

Petre was the hero of the day, and word made its way back to Mr. Rohozeanu. Petre had been promoted to lieutenant within three months, and killing became a part of his life. He never told anyone about how he had showered, crying the entire time as he scrubbed the blood from his body. The nightmares began immediately, and had tormented him for years, even after murder had become just another job to be done.

When he closed his eyes, all he could see was the queer’s face change from pleasure to terror in less than a second. He had an idea what Connor must be seeing when he closed his eyes. Petre still remembered, almost thirty years later. It made him sad that Connor would always see the man’s face behind his closed eyes. Petre picked Connor up and carried him to the bed. He covered his friend, went to kitchen, got a glass of water, and left it on the nightstand next to the bed.

Petre went back to the living room and cleaned up the glass near the door as best he could, unable to find a broom anywhere in the apartment. When he was done, he checked on Connor one more time. Connor had turned over, one arm hanging off the bed, snoring the way that drunk men do. Petre closed the blinds and let himself out of the apartment.

CHAPTER 9

“You are feeling better?” Petre asked him as they got into the Lincoln.

“Eat shit,” Connor grumbled.

He’d woken up with the worst headache he could ever remember. His mouth tasted like Petre and fifty of his neighbors had shit in it while he slept. Every bright reflection of the sun, every noise, made his head feel like it was being hit with a hammer. The sound of the Lincoln’s doors slamming made him want to scream.

“Ah, you are fine,” Petre said, pulling the car out of the garage and onto Front Street.

They traveled the I-184 connector in silence. The muffled hum of the tires on the freeway made Connor want to throw up again. He had barely been able to keep down his coffee. The Starbucks girls hadn’t said anything to him, but they had smiled at him as one took his order and the other made his coffee.

The Lincoln exited the connector and headed west on I-84 toward Caldwell. Connor wasn’t looking forward to dealing with Larry Fallon and his screeching harpy whore. Lately, he’d begun to dread the weekly visits less, watching Jera from the corner of his eye when she wasn’t verbally abusing him. He’d fantasized about taking the collar off of her neck and choking Larry to death with it, but his trip with Dracul had cured that thought. Today he wanted to sit in the car and do nothing, except maybe throw up once or twice more.

“Cheer up,” Petre said to him as they passed the Nampa exits. “You get to see your best friend. I get to see my girlfriend.”

Connor smiled at the joke, but the thought of laughing made his head pound and his stomach gurgle.

“I think she will become your girlfriend though,” Petre frowned. “She doesn’t like Petre. She likes Connor.” Petre glanced over at his friend.

“Fuck off,” Connor said without smiling. It hurt to much to smile. Petre looked offended until Connor gave him the middle finger.

*****

“Oh look, it’s Faggot, and his friend Frankenfaggot,” Jera taunted as they entered the foul-smelling house. “You two sure spend a lot of time together. I bet you both could describe each other’s dick to a sketch artist.”

Larry guffawed from down the hallway as he gathered the money.

“What’s the matter, Faggot? You don’t look so good. Your pal here stretch out your ass too much on the way over here?” she continued relentlessly. “Better go get an STD test. You never know where your friend has been. Hell, he probably better get tested too. No telling where you two been sticking your meat if you’re willing to stick it in each other.”

Connor’s head was ready to burst. He wished the bitch would just shut her mouth. He couldn’t even fantasize about fucking her today. He felt himself beginning to fantasize about choking the life out of her, but that thought brought Travis Benkula’s purple face back into his mind, which caused his stomach to nearly empty its contents. He thought that it would actually improve the decor and the smell of the shithole they stood in. He almost laughed and puked at the same time.

“What’s so funny, cocksucker? You thinking about how little Frankenfaggot’s dick is? Let me see it. I wanna see if it is as small as—”

“If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m going to make you eat six of your teeth,” Connor growled, finally tired of her mouth.

He thought she might have a smart reply, but the look in his eyes must have convinced her that today was the wrong day to push his buttons. Larry walked back into the living room, carrying a plastic bag stuffed with bills. He tossed it on the counter and sat down on the couch.

“Make it neat,” Connor said to him.

“What?” Larry asked.

“I said,” Connor repeated slowly with enough threat to make the skinny little man understand that today was not the day to do anything but what he was told to do, “make it neat. Stack the bills. I’m not going to spend twenty minutes picking through your sweat-stained money so the boss doesn’t have to. It’s your debt, make it neat.”

“Man, fuck you,” Larry said from the couch.

Connor rushed the junkie, grabbed him by the hair, and pulled him off of the couch as hard as he could, feeling some of Larry’s greasy hair separate from his unwashed head. Larry screamed like a woman until Connor brought his knee up into the junkie’s mouth, then again into his stomach. Larry dropped like a sack of rocks onto the floor. Jera began to scream and was about to attack Connor when she felt the cold barrel of Petre’s pistol against her cheek.

“Maybe you don’t like him,” Petre said to her, “but maybe you want to live?”

Jera opened her mouth to say something but Connor spoke first.

“First words out of your mouth had better be ‘I’m going to fix the money,’ or I’m going to have Petre blow your ugly fucking head off and bury you and your dipshit boyfriend in the fucking desert.”

Jera’s mouth snapped shut, then opened again when she said, “I’ll fix the money.”

Petre’s gun followed her as she walked to the counter. Connor could see her shoulders twitch, and a few seconds later he heard her crying softly. As she separated the hundreds, fifties, twenties, and tens into neat piles, her crying turned into hitching sobs as the tears streamed from her eyes, making mudslides on her face from the dark eye liner.

Connor looked down at Larry, still on the floor, holding his mouth with one hand, his guts with the other. Larry was staring at Petre’s shoes, or maybe some cockroaches that were wandering around near Petre’s feet. He was doing his best to get this visit over with after pushing Connor too far, and not wanting to push it any further.

Connor went to the counter and stood next to Jera. He reached out and put a hand on her arm. She jerked away, crying out as if he had struck her, the wad of bills she’d been stacking in neat piles falling to the floor. She bent down to retrieve the bills and began to separate them once more. Connor reached out again, this time lightly touching the dirty leather collar around her neck. She flinched, but didn’t pull away, and didn’t cry out.

“Why does he make you wear this?” he asked quietly, so Larry wouldn’t hear him.

“Fuck you,” she said, without looking at him.

Connor ran his finger around the outside edge of the collar, felt the sweat and grime that coated it and made a seal between it and her skin. He lightly put the tip of his finger under the edge of it, testing to see how tight it was. Jera stopped separating the bills, her breath becoming shallow, her eyes closing as if wishing Connor would just go away and leave her alone.

“Why would you let him make you wear it?” he asked.

She jerked her neck away from him and began to cry again. Connor reached down to her loose sleeve, gently lifting it to see the bruises covering her arms. Her hands trembled, fumbling with a new wad of bills, her breathing once again fast and shallow.

“Just leave me alone,” she whispered.

“Why? Will he hurt you again?” Connor asked her with a whisper of his own.

“Just leave me alone. Please,” she pleaded, glancing down at Larry who was now watching the two of them.

“Tell me,” he said, this time in a louder voice. “Tell me what he does to you.”

“Please. Just leave me alone.” This time her voice trembled.

Connor’s fingers let go of her sleeve and went back to collar around her neck, tracing another line around it until his fingers touched the ring at the front.

“Does he make you wear a leash?”

“Goddammit,” she said.

Her hands dropped to her sides. Petre looked very interested in what was going on, but said nothing, keeping his eyes on Larry, who was staring at Connor and Jera.

“Tell me,” Connor said, his mouth inches from her ear. He had to breathe through his mouth this close, her foul stench overpowering his nose, his stomach fighting the waves of revulsion. “Tell me why he makes you wear this.” Connor’s voice rose as he went on, “Tell me why he makes you fuck other men. Tell me where these bruises come from.”

“Leave me alone!” she screamed in his face, her hands balled into fists. “Just leave me the fuck alone, you fucking faggot! Fucking asshole! Fuck you!” Her fists struck Connor in the chest and face.

She tried to scream and hit and cry all at once and ended up only crying. Connor wrapped his arms around her to keep her fists at bay, feeling her breasts through his jacket, feeling the slimy stickiness of her grimy skin through her t-shirt. He was disgusted by her, by her filthy, greasy hair, by her raccoon makeup running in rivers down her face, by the smell of her reminding him of a locker room full of unwashed hockey gear that had been sitting around growing bacteria for a month.

He looked down over her shoulder while still holding on to her. Larry had raised himself up to his knees, a snarl on his face. He lowered himself as if to spring from the ground and attack Connor. Just as he started upwards, Petre’s highly-polished dress shoe connected with his mouth, followed by the butt of the pistol on his forehead. Larry rolled back over, screaming in pain at two new injuries.

“Finish the money, Jera,” Connor said into her ear as he let her go.

Jera didn’t move, shaking and swaying slightly on her feet as her tears continued to flow. Connor reached out to touch her arm again, but she flinched away and began to separate the money. Connor watched her for a moment, then walked over to where Larry rolled around on the dirty floor as he tried to staunch the flow of blood from the gash on his forehead. Connor knelt down next to the man and grabbed his hair once again.