Hard Case Crime: Money Shot (5 page)

The faded sign on the building’s rough brick hide gave away nothing. HW Equipment Ltd. I saw an address spray painted above a heavily barred door. 23202. No street name.

The warehouse was near the dead end of a desolate block of ugly industrial buildings. It felt like a marathon just to make it to a cross street. When I finally found one, my eyes had trouble focusing on the signs. East 37th and Saco Street. I didn’t recognize either one. I could have been anywhere.

I found a rusty shopping cart at the intersection. It was full of swollen, moldy phonebooks and an eclectic collection of glass jars containing, apparently, urine. There didn’t seem to be an owner nearby. In fact, there were no humans anywhere that I could see. No homeless, no hookers, no junkies, not even cars. Nothing, like I was the last girl on earth and had somehow missed out on the apocalypse while I was in the trunk. There was, however, a shirt in the shopping cart. It was plaid, stiff, and only slightly less repugnant than the garbage bag, but I was thrilled to have it. I slipped my arms into the ragged sleeves and pulled the trash bag down to form a longer skirt. Now if only I could find some shoes, I’d be set.

I impulsively decided to take the shopping cart. It helped tremendously to lean my battered bones on the handle as I limped along the empty street. Plus, if I actually did encounter a fellow human, shopping carts are the world’s best urban camouflage. They have the power to make a person invisible in any big city in America. You hear a shopping cart coming down the street, you immediately look away from the person pushing it.
Homeless,
you tell yourself.
Better not look, or they’ll ask for money.

I thought I might really die before I found a phone. More and more it seemed like the best course of action would be to just lie down on the pavement. The only thing that kept me going was picturing Jesse Black’s cocky smirk disintegrating under a point-blank lead facial.

I finally saw a sign for a tiny Mexican
mercado
at the far end of the street. The
mercado
was closed, but there was a payphone out front, plastered with stickers advertising taxis, escorts and phone cards with special rates to Central and South America. Amazingly, the phone worked.

I punched 9-1-1 on the grimy keypad. A woman came on the line, asking about the nature of my emergency. I told her I had been shot and gave the address of the
mercado.
She told me to hold on, that help was on the way.

Hearing this, my body wanted to pass back out. Mission accomplished, right? Time to lie down and wait for the cavalry. But my mind wouldn’t shut up about what had happened, fighting to make logic out of the madness. I thought of feisty little Didi giving those goons what for in my office and was suddenly very afraid for her. I had to make sure she was okay.

Even though I have a great memory for numbers and addresses, it took me a minute to pull my own calling card number out of the numb mush of my brain. As soon as I did, I phoned Didi’s home and her cell. Nothing. That scared me even worse, since I knew Didi to answer the phone any time, day or night. Even on the toilet or in the heat of her frequent intimate liaisons. And no, I didn’t want to leave a message. What I had to say was for her ears only. Paranoia coiled around my aching ribs, making it even harder to breathe. No sign of an ambulance. I couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to Didi. I needed to call someone to go check up on her, to make sure she was okay. There was only one person I could think of who would be awake, willing and able. I called Malloy.

Lalo Malloy was the new guy, since Daring Angels’ faithful security escort Joe Saturnino got married and moved to Florida. I always employ a guy part-time to drive my girls to gigs with new production companies and hang out while they shoot. I like an older guy, reliable and mature enough not to go all gaga over the girls, but still intimidating enough to make sure no one thinks to try anything funny with my models. I pay a small hourly wage and the girls top it off with tips. Not bad for a part-time gig.

Malloy was an ex-cop like Joe, though he looked much more like a thug. Six-two, thick through the shoulders and the middle and pretty much everywhere else. Olive drab eyes that sized up the world through a taciturn tough-guy squint. Buzz-cut hair gone solid silver and under it a face like a police sketch based on the descriptions of terrorized victims. His left ear was slightly cauliflowered, just enough to let you know that he was no stranger to knuckles. His look was perfect for the job and he came highly recommended by Joe. They had been buddies back in the old LAPD days and had both left the force under less than sterling circumstances. I didn’t ask and they didn’t tell.

“Lalo’s okay,” Joe told me with a smirk the day he introduced us, faking a punch to Malloy’s meaty shoulder. “For a Hispamick.”

“A what?” I had asked.

“His daddy was Irish,” Joe explained. “And mama’s Mexican. A Hispamick.”

Malloy himself seemed neither amused nor annoyed by the joke. He just shrugged and put his big hands in his pockets.

He’d been driving my girls for almost two months and I still didn’t really know him all that well. He wasn’t an easy guy to get to know. Came in, did his job and left. Solid, but not much for casual conversation. I felt really strange calling him in the middle of the night like this, but there just wasn’t anyone else. It took me several wrong numbers to get him on the line. He picked up on the first ring.

“Malloy,” he said, like he was still answering the phone at the Homicide desk.

I had no idea what the hell I was going to say to him.

“Malloy,” I repeated, feeling like I had forgotten how to speak. “It’s... I...”

“I’ll call you back,” he said suddenly and hung up.

Baffled, I stared at the dirty blue receiver in my hand, then slowly put it back on the cradle. I leaned over the handle of the shopping cart and maybe grayed out for a little while, but then the phone rang, scaring me and making me jump. It hurt.

“Malloy?” I said into the phone.

“Angel,” he replied. I could hear traffic in the background. I figured he must have gotten the number off caller ID and then gone out to a payphone. “You wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”

I felt suddenly sure I really was going to black out. What the hell
was
going on? I didn’t even know where to begin.

“Angel,” Malloy was saying. “Angel, are you there?”

I tried to tell Malloy about the blonde and the briefcase full of money and Jesse and the blue Civic. I can’t imagine I made much sense, but eventually Malloy got the gist of it.

“Did you call an ambulance?” he asked.

It took me a minute to answer that. Did I call an ambulance? Things were getting woozy and confusing and I just wanted to lie down.

“Yeah,” I eventually said, or must have because then Malloy was telling me to get the hell away from the
mercado,
to hide from the ambulance.

“Hide from the ambulance?” I said. Nothing seemed to make any sense. “But why...”

“Angel,” Malloy said. “If you let them take you to the hospital, you’re going to be arrested for the murder of Sam Hammer.”

“Angel,” Malloy was saying again. “Angel.”

His voice sounded so far away that I thought I was still on the phone until I felt his hands on me, wrapping a rough blanket around my body and lifting me like a tired kid. I have no idea how I got away from the phone and the
mercado
but I did. I also had no idea how Malloy found me, but he did. I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my life. I would have kissed him if my lips hadn’t felt like I’d just kissed a belt sander. He bundled me into the passenger seat of his blocky old SUV.

Things went all non-sequential and confusing again. The next thing that seemed solid was me in a doctor’s office. I was lying on one of those examination tables with the paper that rolls down to cover it fresh for each patient. There were stirrups, like at the gynecologist. My trash bag dress was gone and I was wearing one of those backless deals they give you in the hospital. I seemed relatively clean and odor-free, but the cacophony of pain made it hard to concentrate.

I rolled on my side, briefly breathless from the effort. That’s when I noticed a tan leather locking restraint hanging from the nearest stirrup. I frowned and looked around.

There were three other restraints hanging from the table, plus a thick leather strap that presumably buckled around the waist. Beside the table was a stainless steel tray on wheels, filled with terrifying antique medical instruments. There was a red rubber enema bag on a pole by my head. The glass-front cabinet against the opposite wall was filled with boxes of needles and bags of saline solution and clear plastic speculums and catheter kits and medical staplers. Above the examination table was a large framed photograph of an icy blonde in skintight white latex. Her waist was corseted down to insect proportions and her long legs were laced into thigh-high boots. She held a hypodermic needle the size of a .357 Magnum.

I struggled to sit up, dizzy and sick but then Malloy was there and so was the blonde, although she was dressed down in faded jeans and a white t-shirt. Her pale, shiny face was free of make up. She was still stunning.

“Angel,” Malloy said. “Lie down, will you?”

“Where the hell am I?” I asked. “This isn’t a hospital.”

The blonde smiled. Malloy shook his head.

“It was this or Tijuana,” he said.

I didn’t want to lie down but my body overrode my brain and I fell back on the table. I looked up at the photo.

“You brought me to a
dominatrix
?” I asked, pressing my thumb and forefinger into the corners of my eyes and then flinching at how much that hurt.

“This is Ulka,” Malloy said. “She’s gonna fix you up.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” I said.

“Don’t be afraid,” the blonde said in a clipped German accent that did nothing to reassure me. “I am very good. And much cleaner than Tijuana.”

She turned and began washing her hands at a steel sink with foot-operated faucets. Suddenly I remembered Didi, how she hadn’t answered her phone. I’d meant to ask Malloy to check on Didi, not rescue my sorry ass.

“Shit!” I said, sitting up too fast and feeling stabbed by a dozen knives, the largest just beneath my armpit. “Malloy, I need you to go check on Didi right away.”

“Keep your shirt on,” Malloy told me. “I talked to Didi on the way to pick you up. She’s ticked off at the cops who took her in for questioning and worried sick about you, but otherwise she’s fine.”

Relief stole the very last drops of energy I had left. My body slumped back down on the table while my brain concentrated on not puking. It worked, but just barely.

“I’m ready,” Ulka said.

“I’ll wait outside,” Malloy replied.

I wanted to ask him to stay with me, but I felt suddenly shy and embarrassed and then it was too late, because he was gone, leaving me alone with Ulka, She Wolf of the SS.

I’ve never gotten along all that well with pro Dommes. The ones I’ve made videos with always seemed to look down on me and my girls because we do things on camera that they feel are beneath them. The way I see it, we’re all in the same business. Providing visual stimulation. Does it really make a difference if that stimulation is the most exotic, esoteric fetish or just good old fashioned baby-making? Bottom line: Everyone is doing the same thing while they watch it.

“I’m afraid I don’t have any sort of anesthesia,” Ulka said, slipping her mannish hands into latex gloves. “That would be sort of counterproductive in my line of work.”

“Great,” I said, looking away toward the wall.

“I do have some of these,” she said, pressing several chalky white pills into my palm. “You’ll need them.”

I didn’t even ask what they were. I just dry swallowed them all before she could even bring a paper cup of water to my lips.

I waited impatiently for the pills to work while she started to examine the mess below my right armpit. Her hands were much more gentle than I would have expected.

“It looks like the bullet went right between your arm and your torso,” she said. “Maybe bounced off a rib and then angled through the triceps. Either you are very lucky or the person who shot you is very stupid.”

“A little of both, I think,” I replied.

“You will need a few stitches,” she said.

“Stitches?” I felt suddenly lightheaded. “Can you do that?”

“Of course,” she said, selecting a sterilized paper packet the size of an index card from a box in the cabinet. “Sutures are my specialty, though to tell the truth, my clients rarely actually need them.”

I wouldn’t say that she was nice, but she had a wry, deadpan sense of humor and her hands were steady as stone. Of course it hurt like hell, but she didn’t make me feel like a slut. She treated me almost like a real patient. I’ve had legit doctors treat me worse. I wound up liking her far more than I had planned to.

“How do you know Malloy?” I asked between bouts of silent, jaw grinding pain. “He’s not a client, is he?”

I couldn’t see Malloy crawling around on the floor begging to lick a woman’s boots, but you never knew these days. Ulka smirked and shook her head as she snipped the thread from the last stitch.

“Nothing like that,” she said. “He provides security for me when I book night sessions with new clients. I removed a bullet from his right thigh two years ago. That was amazing. Well, for me anyway.” She placed a bandage over her handiwork. “One more thing.”

Before I could protest or even register what was happening, she was pressing her large thumbs against the mess of my nose, giving the whole thing a decisive shove to the left. The pain was indescribable.

“You’re done,” she said, slapping a piece of tape over the bridge of my nose.

Truer words were never spoken. There was no need to stick a fork in me. The pills had kicked in with a vengeance while I wasn’t paying attention and now that the bright foreground pain of the stitches and whatever the fuck she’d done to my nose was over, I could feel everything shutting down. I was most definitely, unequivocally done. I vaguely remember Malloy returning to carry me somewhere and cold leather against my bruised skin and then merciful nothing.