THUGLIT Issue Four (6 page)

Vincent drew a gun.

It was a small thing, a Beretta Tomcat with that matte-black finish that blended into the shadows. He held it sideways in one hand and took a bead at my head. I pulled up Mancini by the collar and put him between me and Vincent as a human shield. Mancini was like butter in my hands now. The pain made him compliant.

We froze like that for a moment. Cars rushed by on the highway in the distance and wind blew off the ocean through the pine trees. The neon bar sign flickered and then went out.  I jostled Mancini again, twisting his elbow joint against his veins and cutting off circulation to his arm. He clenched his jaw and the scar on his face turned purple.

Vincent smiled. Started to laugh. The sound came up from deep in his diaphragm, like I'd just told the greatest joke in history. He put down the gun and slid it back into his pocket. He raised his other hand up with an open palm to show he meant no harm.

I released Mancini. He stumbled away from me like a drunk and fell to his knees, clasping his arm in his hands. Just like that, as suddenly as the fighting started, it stopped. We were friends again. Comrades. Partners in crime.

Vincent said, “I'm sorry about that. We had to make sure you were cool.”

“So you tried to smash my face in? What would you have done if you succeeded?”

“Buried you. Out by the coast, probably. I hear bodies wash up there all the time. But it didn't happen. You're good.”

I didn't say anything. The door to the bar opened and a group of people came out. They looked at us as they went to their van. Mancini was still on the ground, breathing slow.

Vincent turned to him. Said, “It still hurts?”

Mancini nodded. Didn't say anything.

“Did you really swing at him with all you got?”

Mancini was quiet for a moment. He grabbed his elbow and kept his arm straight as he worked himself up off his knees. When he spoke his voice was slurred and broken, like his mouth was full of cotton balls. When he opened his mouth I could see the rough stub of his tongue, and the scars on the inside of his cheeks.

He said, “Kid's alright.”

Vincent came over and patted me on the back. He pushed a cigarette out of his pack for me. I took it, just so I wouldn't have to explain to him that I didn't smoke. I held it in my hand until Vincent was done smoking his, then discretely dropped it on the sidewalk. We walked back to the car in silence. I sat in the back seat and watched the cones of our headlights pierce through the forest.

From that moment on, Vincent and Mancini treated me like I was one of them. A brother. They told me all their dirty jokes and stood up for me whenever they thought I was being threatened. They invited me to eat with them and they ordered me a drink whenever they were having one. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Vincent and Mancini were ready to die for one another, and they'd both die for me.

"You've got brass ones, kid," Vincent said. "Like one of us."

By Albert Tucher

“Check this out,” said Mary Alice.

She slid her smart phone across the table. Diana moved her Greek salad and diet soda aside and cent
ered the phone in front of her.

“Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” she
said. “A naked man with a hard-on.”

“Comedian,” said Mary Alice. “You’ve already seen it twice before lunch. So have I, but never mind that. Look at his face.”

“What about it?”

“That’s the face of family values.”

“No wonder I don’t know him.”

“Len Howard? Mister Social Conservative of Warren County? He’s the one who started the crackdown out there.”

“The one who’s yelling about prostitution in his fair city?”

“That’s him.”

“I figured he was worried about his reelection and just looking for an issue.”

“He is. But take a wild guess how he knows about it.”

“He’s a client. Surprise, surprise.”

“If he hasn’t gotten to you, he will. I think he’s pretty new at this hobby of his.”

Diana knew how that went—a man found out that he could buy hot and cold running sex, and he went crazy.

For some men it was just a phase, but others never got over it.

“How did you get him to hold still for the picture?”

Mary Alice grinned. “I told him to close his eyes and he’d get something special.”

Diana took another look. Howard’s eyes were indeed closed in the picture.

“Did he? Get something special, I mean.”

“Of course. I run an honest business here. But now I have some insurance if he ever tries to throw me under the bus.”

Diana didn’t comment, but Mary Alice’s plan was a bad idea. If it really came down to it, a hooker was better off taking her lumps than threatening an influential man.

“Matter of fact,” said Mary Alice, “I think I’ll email this to the group, so everybody will know what’s going on.”

That was an even worse idea. Diana and Mary Alice both belonged to an online discussion group, where women in the business vented and shared information about good clients, bad clients, reliable gynecologists, and police crackdowns. New members had to come with an introduction from a veteran, and years earlier Diana had sponsored Mary Alice.

But everything runs its course after a while.

“I’ve been getting a bad feeling about that group,” said Diana. “I think some of the new girls aren’t girls at all. I think they’re clients, or maybe law enforcement.”

“Like who?”

“Jacki, for instance. Ever notice how she’s always asking questions, but she never contributes anything?”

“I know her. Matter of fact, I’m her sponsor. You’re just paranoid.”

“That’s healthy in this business.”

“Well, until she actually does something… Anyway, here goes.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Diana.

Mary Alice’s finger hovered over the touch screen, until she dropped her hand into her lap.

“You always spoil the fun,” she said.

“You mean you know I’m right.”

“Whatever.”

Mary Alice picked the phone up and put it back in her bag.

That was Monday. On Thursday Diana had no clients to see until the afternoon. She decided to let the rush hour traffic peter out before heading to Fanelli’s gym for a workout. A little after nine she made sure her gym bag had the necessities and headed for the front door.

As she reached for the knob, the doorbell rang. That stopped her. She wasn’t expecting anyone,
and she didn’t like surprises.

The spy
hole showed her a reason for concern—three strange men who had found their way to her front steps. She took another look and pegged them. They weren’t holding
Watchtower
magazines or anything similar, but they still glowed with the clean-cut, barely contained aggression of proselytizers. Diana opened the inner door and spoke through the screen.

“Sorry, gentlemen. I’m not what you’re looking for.”

“Actually, you are,” said the forty-ish man in the center of the group. He was the only one in a suit and tie, and his body language said he was in charge. “You’re Diana Andrews.”

The other two were husky twenty-somethings in polo shirts and khakis. They looked like brothers, maybe even twins, with their blond buzz cuts and their arms folded in identical macho-man poses. She was supposed to be intimidated.

“We would like to speak with you inside,” said the older man.

Diana pushed the screen door open so it bounced off the nearer of the two young men. Without thinking he took a step back and flailed with his arms as his foot found nothing but air. He caught himself two steps down.
His face turned red with anger.

She closed the screen door again and latched it.

“I don’t know you.”

The older man gave her a glare, but she had seen better ones.

“Okay,” he said. “We represent Mr. Len Howard.”

“I don’t know him, either.”

“That’s what we would like to talk to you about.”

She kept looking at him and waiting for him to remember his manners.

“And my name is Paul Porterfield.”

Diana still didn’t like this situation, but she had to find out what Porterfield wanted. A man who knew both her business and her home address had her at a disadvantage.

“Please come in.”

The young men started to follow him, but she froze them with a look.

“One strange man at a time, please.”

Porterfield nodded at his companions, who scowled but stayed put on the steps. Diana led him down the short hall and to the right, into her living room. She pointed toward her aging sofa and took her single armchair. She didn’t get much company.

“What’s with the bodyguards?”

“Mr. Howard gets threats. Righteous men always do.”

“So why aren’t they with him now? Let me guess. He gave them the slip. Sometimes he does that, and you just found out what he does while he’s off the leash. Am I right?”

“I thought you didn’t know him.”

“I don’t. I know of him.”

“Len Howard has a great future ahead of him. He could be governor. New Jersey desperately needs to restore God to His rightful place.”

“Seems to me God could have chosen better.”

“All men are frail. I wish Len had picked another brand of weakness, but there it is.” He looked at her. “Maybe you can explain it to me. Why do so many men choose to self-destruct in this particular way?”

“I can think of worse things he could do. He’s not molesting children, is he?”

Porterfield closed his eyes for a moment a
s if saying a prayer of thanks.

“I have an arrangement to offer you. Mr. Howard will do what he will do, and it might as well be with you. You have a good reputation by the standards of your business.
”

“Thanks, I think.”

“He will pay you your going rate, of course. Then I will pay you the same again to keep me informed.”

“No.”

“No?”

He made it sound like a
language that he didn’t speak.

“I thought you w
ere in business for the money.”

“That’s why I’m saying no, because it would kill my business. You said I have a good reputation. In this business you get a good rep by keeping your mouth shut about clients. Period.”

He studied her and saw nothing to encourage him. He got up.

“If you won’t help us, I suggest that you stay in Sussex County. Warren is about to get too hot for you.”

“I don’t like threats. Jacki.”

“What?”

“That’s you, isn’t it? Online, I mean.”

“No.”

She studied him. He had the smug look of a man who thought he could fool her by telling the literal truth. He knew who Jacki was.

“Never mind,” she said.

Porterfield stood and started for the door without another word to her. She could live with that. When she heard the front door open and shut, she went to the spyhole and verified that he and his muscle men had left.

She went back to plan A. As she started the drive to Fanelli’s gym, she got an annoying surprise. Her power lock had stopped working on the driver’s side, which would mean a brief but expensive visit to the mechanic.

It could wait.

All through her step class and upper body workout, Diana thought about Paul Porterfield. As she drove home again, she decided to tell the online group about the encounter
. He might try someone else.

Her computer was on her grandmother’s old oak desk in the spare room of her rented Cape Cod. Diana logged into the group. Before she could compose her post, she noticed that Jacki had resurfaced with a message of her own just six minutes earlier, asking if anyone wanted a new client in the Driscoll area. Jacki didn’t want him, because he wanted Greek.

That happened. Women in the business offered to trade a client for a favor down the line. But Diana had met several men who tried to talk her into anal sex by saying they could get it from Jacki.

Maybe Jacki was tired of walking funny and figured that she had enough business to do without it, or maybe online Jacki wasn’t the real Jacki.

Diana went to the phone on her kitchen wall and speed-dialed Mary Alice.

“I need to know. Who’s Jacki?”

“Why?”

“She’s giving me an itch. I think the group is compromised, and that could be very bad. For us, clients, everybody.”

“I still think you’re paranoid, but okay. Jacki Greenwald. I met her the way you met me. Remember?”

Diana did remember Mary Alice accosting her years earlier in the parking lot of the Savoy motel. Newly divorced, Mary Alice had been sleeping around and thinking about getting paid for it.

“So you got her started with some referrals?”

“For a cut of the first date with each one. You know the drill.”

“Have you seen her lately?”

“No,” said Mary Alice after a pause. “Now that you mention it. We used to have lunch once in a while, but she canceled the last couple of times.”

Diana went back to the computer and sent Jacki an email off-group. She couldn’t post an accusation until she was sure.

Jacki’s reply arrived ten minutes later. “Send me your contact info. I’ll have him get in touch with you.”

“I want some face time with you first,” Diana typed. “I don’t do referrals with anyone I haven’t met.”

“Lunch tomorrow?”

Diana sat back in surprise. She had expected Jacki to make an excuse, which would have confirmed her suspicions.

“It’ll have to be Mickey D’s by the no-name motel off I-80,” Jacki wrote. “I have dates there. Two o‘clock?”

“Works for me.”

The location was a nice touch. So was the time. A lot of clients got away from the office for lunchtime dates, which left hookers getting a bite where and when they could. This time Diana didn’t believe it, though.

At two sharp she sat at a booth with coffee in front of her. She never ate McDonald’s. Jacki didn’t keep her waiting. Diana liked the woman’s look, with her petite figure, enormous brown eyes and mass of curly dark hair. Jackie had a Happy Meal and a diet Sprite on her tray.

“Not eating?” said Jacki.

“I had something earlier.”

“So, what can I tell you?” Jacki smiled. “I’d want to meet you if the roles were reversed.”

“You know Mary Alice.”

“She’s great. Very generous. And gorgeous. That dark and dangerous look is my type. I understand you were her, uh, mentor.”

“Interesting way to put it.”

Diana’s curt reply and unwavering scrutiny made Jacki start to squirm.

“You’re interested in this client?”

“Maybe.”

“I mean, that’s why you’re here, right?”

Diana kept looking at the other woman.

“Well, he’s here. I canceled on him, but he says he never got the email. You can go right over.”

“That’s convenient.”

“Well, sometimes things work out that way.”

“Not this time.”

Diana slid out of the booth and got up to go. Jacki’s mouth hung open unattractively.

“You know what else is convenient?”

Diana stared down at the other woman.

“This location, that’s what. Most people wouldn’t know, but I pay attention to things like jurisdiction. I’m surprised you even tried this on me. That motel is about six feet into Len Howard territory.”

She left her untouched coffee for Jacki to deal with and headed for the exit.