Enforcer (41 page)

Just as he was starting to come around, Connor stuffed an incredibly dirty sock in his mouth, smiling behind his ski mask at the gagging sounds Larry made. He double-checked his impromptu knots made out of dirty shirts with long sleeves, making sure they would keep the man secure for at least another few minutes. Larry’s eyes were glassy, rounding out his dazed expression, and he began to shiver and vibrate on the floor.

Connor went back to the cooler, staring inside it for a moment. He pulled out a small black garbage sack from his coat pocket and began to transfer the money into it, still unable to believe what he was seeing. If Larry had counted the bills and kept them separated in proper stacks, Connor estimated it at just over one hundred thousand dollars. He’d more than likely given the woman ten thousand dollars in cash when he’d thrown her a stack.

Below the stacks of hundreds were stacks of twenties, tens, fives, and six large rolls of one dollar bills. Connor grabbed it all. Within thirty seconds the cooler was completely empty. He looked over at Larry, who glared at him, more than likely trying to kill the intruder with his mind. Connor smiled behind his mask again before kicking him in the face hard enough to break off a few of his remaining teeth. Larry didn’t even cry out behind the dirty sock in his mouth as his eyes closed instantly, head rebounding once off the carpet once before becoming still.

Connor panicked for a moment, thinking he might have killed him, until he watched the junkie’s chest rise and fall. He reached down and made sure Larry’s mouth was pointed toward the floor, just in case blood made its way through the sock and down his throat. He didn’t want to kill Larry, and the one thing no one needed at the moment was a homicide of a drug dealer who was linked to Ojacarcu.

He checked one more time. Larry was going to be hurting for a long time, but that was Larry’s problem, Connor thought. He put the pistol back in his coat pocket as he walked to the front door. He remembered the back door and walked through the kitchen, trying to find it within all of the junk piled everywhere. He found it between stacks of boxes and unlocked the deadbolt, wedging the door open just enough to slip out without tipping the mattresses outside over. He walked to the hole in the fence, looked around twice, then rolled up the ski mask but left the sunglasses on. Connor walked as nonchalantly as he could back to the car he’d parked in the repair lot.

CHAPTER 34

The text from Petre was short and to the point.
Finish your drive and come straight to the office. Together.
Connor’s guts twisted up, knowing that Larry had implicated him in the robbery. He’d prepped himself for it for two days, but had grown increasingly worried when everything continued to be business as usual. He almost hoped that he’d either accidentally killed Larry, or that the new collectors had shown up and killed him on the spot when he didn’t have the money. Connor’s shame at such a hope was unable to hold a candle to the firestorm of anxiety and panic that threatened to consume him as he read Petre’s text.

He locked his phone and put it back in his coat pocket. He was sure he’d be able to handle anything Ojacarcu tried to trip him up with, assuming Ojacarcu believed anything a junkie had to say when it involved money coming up short. Connor knew the boss would investigate Larry’s story. It was Ojacarcu’s nature. The man was nothing if not thorough when it came to acquiring information which allowed him to have the upper hand in any given situation. Connor’s worry that everything was about to crash down around his head paralyzed him with fear until Jera climbed into the Lincoln’s front seat half an hour later.

“I’ve got one last one in an hour, somewhere near Kuna. South of the airport, I think,” she said, pulling down the sun shade to check her makeup in the lighted vanity mirror.

“What shows did you watch when I was asleep?” Connor asked as he pulled onto Franklin Road and headed east toward his apartment.

“Goddammit, Connor,” she said angrily, flipping up the shade and turning to him, “I’m tired of this shit. You won’t tell me wh—”

“What shows did you watch when I was asleep?” he shouted, the fury in his eyes making her shrink as far as she could into her seat.

“Dallas, and Dynasty,” she said in a small voice.

“What was going on in ‘Dallas?’”

“I don’t know,” she said, the words broken by her frightened stuttering.

He began screaming at her, the expression on his face shrinking her into her seat until she felt a foot tall. “What the fuck was going on in Dallas? Tell me! Now!”

“B-B-Bobby was trying to buy an oil refinery,” she answered, tears pooling at the corners of her eyes.

“What else?”

“J.R. was trying to stop him.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re brothers. They’re rivals. Bobby was named Ewing Oil’s president, and J.R. was pissed about it.”

“What happened on ‘Dynasty?’”

“The guy, John Forsythe, I mean Blake Carrington, he… he…” she panicked when she couldn’t remember the twisting, turning storyline of the old eighties television show. “He had to give up part of the estate to his brother. He’d been on trial for his mother’s death. The women were all scheming to fuck him over, except for this one, who gave him some info to prove the other women had lied.”

“What else did you watch?” Connor had brought his voice down to an angry growl.

“I don’t know! I don’t remember!” Her shriek pierced his every nerve, but her sobs threatened to break his heart.

“You better fucking remember. You better fucking remember that I was asleep and you were watching television.”

“Why, Connor? Why are you obsessed with this? Please, please tell me what is going on.” She put her hand on his arm, expecting once again to have him remove it. He pulled his left hand from the steering wheel and covered hers with it.

“Listen,” he said in a gentle voice. He reached up and wiped away a trail of her tears with his thumb, his hand lingering a little too long before he pulled it back to his lap. “We have to go meet with the boss and the others. No matter what happens to you, no matter what you are told, no matter what you see, remember what you did when I was asleep for a couple of hours.”

“You keep saying that but you weren’t asleep! Why do you keep saying you were home and in bed?”

Jera was nearly hysterical at the back-and-forth nature of Connor’s personality shifts, combined with the fear that something very terrible was happening, something that involved Connor’s three hour absence.

Connor gave her hand a hard squeeze, making her cry out in pain. “If you say that one more time, you will be killed.” His eyes were dead, emotionless, but she could hear the plea in his voice. “If you ever say that again, I will be killed. Do you understand me?”

Jera didn’t understand at all, but she understood beyond a doubt that whatever was happening was more than serious. She had no idea what Connor was talking about, but she knew that she trusted him, and whatever he was asking her to do had one or both of their lives attached to it. Jera squeezed his hand back to let him know that she understood the part about being killed.

“We have to go see the boss. Something has happened. I don’t know what because I was asleep while you were watching TV, while we were waiting for your next appointment time. I mean it, Jera. No matter what you see, no matter what you hear, no matter what happens to you or to me, you watched those old shows and I slept, or at least I was in the bedroom.”

“Are we in trouble?” Jera asked, knowing the answer, wanting to see what Connor would say.

“No,” he answered. “Because we were home, sleeping and watching shitty TV shows from the eighties. Before that we were at your appointment, remember?”

She quickly squashed the thought of Robert, a client who lived in the North End, the historical, bike-riding, granola-munching section of Boise.

“I remember,” she answered.

Any other day with Connor not rejecting her casual touch would be a day she wouldn’t dwell on the misery that was her life, clinging to the happiness that such a small gesture gave her. By the time they parked the Lincoln under the arena, she was terrified of what was coming. Connor had held her hand the entire ride, his palm a cold, greasy lump of wax instead of a human hand.

*****

Dracul, Petre, and Vadim met them on the fifth floor as they stepped out of the elevator. There were no smiles, no greetings, only Dracul and Petre parting for Connor and Jera to follow Vadim. The two Romanians collapsed behind to escort them to Ojacarcu’s office. Jera wanted to latch on to Connor’s hand more than she’d ever wanted anything in the world. He had forbidden her to do anything that would look to others as if the two cared for each other in the slightest.

Ojacarcu might believe the two were lovers in secret, but Connor had made it clear as often as he could to Petre and Vadim that she was the worst kind of parasite he could have been saddled with. He didn’t go out of his way to complain about her, but he took digs at her at every opportunity. Petre and Vadim had a running joke that Connor and Jera would eventually get married, knowing it rubbed Connor the wrong way. Not for the humor they found in it, but for the length of time the two would go on and on about it, eventually speaking only in Romanian and laughing every few seconds. Connor would finally explode into a tirade of how revolting, how uncivilized she was, how everything about her disgusted him in the worst possible ways. The two Romanians would burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter, egging him on until his rage erupted in a firestorm of curses and insults.

Ojacarcu might believe the two were sweet on each other, but anyone the boss might ask about them would swear otherwise. Even Petre. Connor hoped the man, his friend, would not tell the boss just how deep his feelings were for Jera.
I am loyal
, Petre had told him more times than he could remember. Connor’s heart sank into his stomach. He knew Petre had no choice in the matter. The three Romanians led them to Ojacarcu’s office, Vadim holding the door from the inside while everyone else filed in. Connor expected to see Larry, but the only occupant was Ojacarcu, sitting behind his desk as usual. Connor walked up to the chairs in front of the desk, knowing this was where the boss would make him stand.

Jera hesitated, stopping in the middle of the room, unsure of where she should go, or why she was there. Dracul grabbed her arm and marched her to Connor’s side. Connor’s mouth curled down in distaste, the only betrayal of his feelings for her. Dracul let go of her and took up a position ten feet behind them. Petre and Vadim stood guard on each side of the door, looking more like Buckingham Palace guards than Eastern European gangsters.

Ojacarcu studied both of them for a full minute. Connor stood still, not staring directly into the boss’ eyes, but not avoiding the man’s gaze either. Jera nervously shifted her weight from foot to foot, while her fingers picked at imaginary lint on her pants and the bottom of her shirt. Her eyes darted from place to place as she took in the beauty of the office, countered by a fear deeper than she’d ever experienced, deeper even than during the worst abuse she’d suffered.

“Connor,” Ojacarcu said, nodding at him, ignoring Jera as if she didn’t exist, “there is a very serious situation that is happening. I do not have time nor the inclination to explain, but I need to know a few things. You will tell me the answers.”

Connor nodded his head, hoping he didn’t look as frightened as he felt inside. He refused to turn his head to look around, but he could feel Dracul’s eyes boring into the back of his head, imagining the man sending him psychic messages of hate and murder.

“What were you doing on Monday afternoon?” Ojacarcu asked.

“I took her around,” he said, nodding his head sideways at Jera, “to her appointments.”

“What else did you do?” the boss asked.

“Like… eating or…?”

Ojacarcu leaned back slightly in his chair. “Tell me about your day. From when you woke up.”

“Mr. Ojacarcu, please don’t take this as me being a smartass, but do you want to know all the details, like, if I got out of bed, took a piss, brushed my teeth, then made some coffee before I took a shower?”

He could definitely feel Dracul’s eyes digging chunks from the back of his skull. Ojacarcu leaned back a little more, a smile playing across his lips.

“No, I understand. Just tell me about where you went,” the older man instructed.

“I woke up around five in the morning, and went to practice at eight. She was awake when I got home from practice. Her first appointment was at eleven. She had another appointment at at one, and then nothing until five. We went back to my place so I could sleep for a couple of hours before she had to go. We stopped at the Dairy Queen and grabbed some food before going back to my place. From six until eleven, she slept for a while and I watched the Senators-Bruins game, then the Kings-Sharks late game before driving out to Blue Canyon for her last appointment. Then we went home and I slept until five and had to get up for practice again.”

“You were at your apartment between the afternoon appointments?” Ojacarcu asked him, but his eyes were watching Jera.

“Yes, sir,” Connor answered. “I needed an hour or two of sleep. It’s a habit most of us have had since junior hockey.”

“Yes, I know of this,” Ojacarcu said, sounding disappointed.