Adrenaline (9 page)

He screamed like a girl.

Geoff shook his head. “Shit.”

Harrison’s wife wrapped her arms around her husband, crying his name. He shoved her aside, and yet, she came back to him.

Geoff looked around, saw them all staring at him. Dern, his face bloodied and white with anger. Dern’s wife, all of the others. Harrison looking at him through the tears and trying to be manly about the whole thing and failing miserably. He said, “I almost made it, man. I almost made it.”

“But you didn’t,” Geoff said.

“Neither did you,” Jansten said. He was smiling coldly, the tough old bastard Geoff had always known. “You’re out, Geoff.”

Chapter 8

Later that day, Carly began her rounds. Out of the Combat Zone, down a few blocks to the bar, and then a turn around Berkeley Street. Back up Commonwealth into the Public Gardens, then back to the bar again.

Dressed in hot pink, offering love in fifteen-minute increments.

Most times on that circuit, something happened. She would get a signal, a wave from some guy, and she would service him as he drove around the Garden. Other times, she brought the johns back to the room. That meant more time, more risk, more games from the men, and more money for her. It also meant more conversation, too. Sometimes that was okay. Sometimes she just had a sense a guy was lonely and just wanted to be with somebody. Sometimes a guy had a fun attitude and talked to her as if she was along for the ride too, not just her tits and ass.

But, all and all, the rides around the Common with her head in some guy’s lap meant the least time for the money and there was something to be said for that.

Nasty girl,
she thought, as she approached the bar and saw herself in the mirrored window. She hated the silly blond wig and skintight bodysuit. Jammer’s selection. She felt sweaty and her ankles were dirty from walking the beat.
Nasty, dumb girl.

Jammer had told her to be on the lookout for a cabbie who liked to be called Mr. Boffo. He brought a lot of johns in, and so she had to service him for free. Work that Jammer usually relegated to Darlene.

Just a month ago, she had been off the street and taking only calls. She could do her work at the Ritz or sometimes on the arm of a visiting businessman wanting a companion for the night. Five hundred a throw. That was before she’d tried to run, the time
before
last. Hours after the incident with Raul, Jammer had found her at the train station, bags packed.

So Jammer gave her the punishment detail, back on the street. He said that Strike had called, saying Raul had been “disappointed with her performance.” That’s all Jammer apparently knew. If he had known what
really
happened at Raul’s, she fully believed he would make good on his favorite threat of spraying her face with lighter fluid and lighting a match. She was pretty sure he had it in him to carry it out.

Why Raul hadn’t told all, she had no idea. Maybe it would make him lose face to admit to the pimp that she cut him. Men were like that, posing for each other all the time. She was nervous every time a car slowed down for her, nervous that Strike or Lee would be waiting in the back to take her to Raul’s.

Her White Knight had been adopting some sort of pose, she was sure. That’s the name she had given the man in the park, just kidding around with herself. She knew he must have had reasons of his own for getting in the fight with Jammer. And her life had hardly become better for his interference.

Jammer had slapped her around again this morning when she had pointed out to him that she had been making more money for the both of them by working as a call girl.

“You think
I’m
gonna lose?” he said, his voice breaking with outrage. “You think
I’m
gonna lose money because you need your ass kicked? You make your five hundred, and I don’t care if it takes one trick or fifty!”

No way she was going to do it, but if she brought in three hundred he might not hit her too hard. Dumbass pimp. He was losing out on all that cash just to make his point about the damn sword cane.

But she knew the real issue was that he was afraid of losing face. Afraid that Raul wouldn’t let him in on the distribution deal. Afraid that if Raul heard some tourist in a suit took Jammer’s weapon away, he would smile like he was pretending he was sad while Strike or one of his other lieutenants smashed Jammer’s elbows with a baseball bat.

Carly could have told Jammer that Raul wouldn’t have given a shit one way or the other about Jammer’s sword cane or anything else about him. Jammer was only half smart. Strictly small-time, but with an ego big enough to fill a small castle. Good at skulking around, following people. Tough enough to slap around whores. Mean enough to earn his nickname by jamming his sharp toys into anyone stupid enough to cross him and look away.

But she knew Raul was just playing with Jammer. Maybe looking to suck up some of his cash and throw Jammer a dying territory. Carly sometimes felt the stirring of what she figured was the wife inside her. She wanted to tell Jammer sometimes what she saw; she wanted to let him know he was making a big mistake with Raul. But she always held back. Giving Jammer advice would only earn her a beating. Besides, she wasn’t giving him anything for free.

Carly searched her reflection, not admiring her beauty, but trying to see if she was still
in
there, behind the whore’s clothing and makeup. For the millionth time, she thought,
why me?

She had grown up just outside Camden, Maine, a beautiful little town that attracted tourists from all over the world with its jewel-like harbor, complete with oh-so-perfect shops. But when she thought of Camden, she thought of the trailer park just outside of town where she had lived with her mother. And how, even at age sixteen, the boys had seemed to know about her.

She could never figure it out. Was it something about her face? Something about the plastic, aluminum, and Formica of trailer park life that made her seem less real, less flesh and blood than the other girls? What was it that made the boys expect her to come across? And worse still, that she would? Maybe it was that she didn’t have a father around anymore to chase them away.

The only one who was different was Neal and that was just in the beginning. Even though he was the one who hurt her the most, she still thought about that summer, starting the day he had come up to her when she had a job at Friendly’s. His family had a vacation house in town, and he was working a construction job between his freshman and sophomore years at Boston College.

He had been in the restaurant every day for weeks, always arranging it so he could sit at her table. Staying polite while his buddies—also out-of-towners—kidded and flirted with her outrageously. Finally, he asked her out to the movies. She went and was surprised to find he didn’t touch her until their goodnight kiss. Even then, she could feel that he wanted to do more, but was holding himself back. It wasn’t until he left her alone that night on the steps, her mother inside already finishing up her first bottle of Lancers, that Carly realized he was respecting her, treating her like she was special.

They had several more dates like that. Once she had seen some of the guys from the Cage coming up to her, and she had hustled Neal into his car. As they took off, Neal looked in his mirror and said, “You know those guys?”

“Just from school,” she had said. And that seemed to be the end of it.

He picked her up to go hiking their third weekend together. They drove to Mount Chocorua. Hiking was harder work than she thought it would be. But when they made it to the top, he had kissed her and said he never had a girl like her before, and would she go with him? That they could figure a way to see each other when he went back to school.

“I know it’s way too early, Carly. But I wish I could just take you with me. Maybe you could get a scholarship, you’re smart. Or maybe work someplace close by. I want you with me.”

She knew he meant it, and she knew in her heart he was nicer than she was. She didn’t really deserve a guy like him, but she wanted him anyhow. He was strong, smart, and going places. Gray eyes, curly black hair, a bit serious, but he knew how to laugh. A little stiff, but that was something she could help him with.

He had held her and although it was wonderful and although she loved him in that moment, she wondered about what she had done with the other boys in the backseats of their cars. How she seemed entirely different now from the girl Simon Creed, co-captain of the football team, called “a pretty little piece of nothing.”

She knew she had to explain. She knew she had to be straight with Neal as much as she wanted to forget it all. And she almost had been, right there on the mountaintop, but somehow she had let the chance pass.

On the way down, they had come across the stream. They were sweaty and grimy right then. And the way she was feeling about him, her clothes seemed just like so much itchy interference and she had slipped out of them, watching his eyes go wide. He had raised his camera and snapped a picture, the one she still had. She had teased him into jumping into the water with her. She had felt so good, so fresh and alive. She dunked herself repeatedly in the cold mountain water and felt she was emerging whole and clean, her past left behind. He had kissed her and touched her all over. And in spite of the shocking cold water, he was far from shrunken. They made love right there on the sun-heated rocks.

It was the best time for her, ever.

And in the weeks that followed, he brought her flowers, they took long walks … always she found herself steering them away from people who knew her.

She dreamed in those weeks about going away. About somehow being able to leave with Neal and never again see Camden or the faces of those boys who knew so much about her.

Carly pushed those thoughts away now, angry with herself. Forcing herself to see that she
was
still in there, behind the makeup.
Remember the swim. Remember the clean water and how fresh and alive you were. You can do that again.

Why remember the coldness of his face? The harsh jerkiness of his little speech when he arrived hours late for their last night of the summer. They were supposed to talk about how they could be together more during the school year. She had a year left of school, and her grades weren’t all that bad. He had an aunt who lived in Brookline that he thought she could move in with if she transferred. Her mother hadn’t quashed the idea yet, saying that maybe this was Carly’s chance to “hook him.”

But when Neal finally arrived, he was clearly drunk and bloodied from fighting. He stood in the doorway of the trailer and said how her “high school friends” had showed up at the bar and asked if he’d had any good head lately.

She tried to tell him then, but the words couldn’t come out, she didn’t know what to say. First she denied it. Then she clung to him, begging him to take her away, telling him that she could explain.

“How? How can you explain it?”

She saw even then that he was waiting, he wanted an answer to make everything right. His voice was hoarse. “Is it true?”

She withdrew from him slowly. She felt herself go still, her arms and legs leaden. None of the explanations she had elaborately worked out seemed to make any sense now. She had dreamed of him listening, his face serious, but forgiving. Of him putting his arm around her and saying it was all right, and that they would leave and together they could start all over. But now, she felt the same as she had before: a pretty little piece of nothing.

“Is it true?” he repeated.

She simply nodded her head.

He had lost it then and struck out with his fist. “You’re a whore!”

Always the gentleman, he didn’t touch her, but left a fist-sized dent on the aluminum wall of their home.

Carly’s mother had started screeching, and the lights had turned on in the other trailers nearby. Neal fled, tears in his eyes.

Carly’s mother went on about it for hours, while Carly herself said very little. Early the next morning, she had left at the regular time, but instead of putting on her waitress apron, she had taken a bus to Boston.

Her money ran out within the first ten days. It didn’t take her long to realize just how desperate her situation was, how quickly hunger came, how quickly lack of shelter sapped her strength. How quickly she realized she had virtually no skills. Even waitress jobs were beyond her, filthy and obviously homeless as she now appeared. Jammer had picked her up in the Boston Common and took care of her for about a week before telling her that she would be turning tricks for him. When she tried to walk out, he beat her and raped her repeatedly for another week and told her that not only were tricks all she was good for, but he was making it his job in life to watch her and see that she did what she was told.

After she recovered, he sent her out on the street for a few months to break her in before she advanced to the call girl status where, somehow, two years had passed. Some of the men on her calls were pretty well off. Maybe a few of them were rich. None of them were interested in her for anything but sex, but she quickly learned enough about clothes and making conversation to not embarrass herself too much at a nice restaurant.

Carly had just passed her eighteenth birthday and felt her eyes were open to the wide world. She knew her last two attempts to get away were pure desperation. Taking off at the bus station with virtually no money on her and no skills would land her in about the same spot on some other city street. If she was going to make it, she needed a better escape plan than that.