Painless (23 page)

Chapter 50

Billy pondered his options, searching for one that didn’t involve bringing Carolyn inside. But there were none. He couldn’t risk Bronson sneaking out a back entrance while they were watching the front. Plus, a man and child staking out a place like this were sure to attract attention. As if going inside wouldn’t.

Billy held Carolyn’s hand as they entered through the front door. He hoped when Carolyn described her Montreal trip to Beth, she would emphasize the visit to the church.

Their path was cut off by a brawny man with a shaved head. The bouncer. He wore a tight black T-shirt that read
Multiple Sex Offender
across the chest, and looked like an NFL middle linebacker who snacked on human growth hormone. He peered at Billy. Then at Carolyn. And a troubled look came over his bloated face.

He spoke perfect English. “I’ve seen some sick shit doing this job, but you win first prize, buddy.”

Billy pointed at Carolyn. “Can you watch the language around the kid?”

The bouncer shook his head with disgust. “What she
hears
in this place is the least of her worries. You do know what this place is?”

“I know how this looks,” Billy conceded.

“Yet you did it anyway. I hoped you were mentally ill, but actually you’re just a pervert.”

Billy nervously fidgeted. His eyes continually left the bouncer as he spoke, distracted by thoughts of Bronson in the next room. He came off like a crack-addicted pedophile and he knew it.

“It’s a long story. I don’t have time to explain, but I need to get in there.”

“Fine, go ahead before you make a mess in your pants, but the kid stays with me.”

That wasn’t an option—she couldn’t leave his sight.
Everybody’s a suspect.

The man crossed his arms across his heaving chest. The answer was a resounding no.

“What if she promises to put her hands over her eyes? We won’t be here long, I swear. I just have to meet someone.”

“Your dealer?”

“I have to get in there,” he pleaded.

“There are a couple hundred strip joints and fetish clubs in Montreal. Why don’t you take your perverted ass to one of them?”

Billy had one last option, outside of trying to fight the man who looked like he would enjoy pummeling his “perverted ass.” He reached into his wallet and scrounged up a hundred and twenty-five American dollars, the last of their traveling money. He slipped it to the bouncer.

Money talks and pervert walks. The bouncer pocketed the money and said, “Just don’t come blaming me when she’s dancing the pole for drug money.” He then waved them in, a disgusted scowl on his face

Billy instructed Carolyn to put her hands over her eyes until he told her to take them off. She followed his orders.

Les Princesses looked like a sports bar with mounted televisions and colorful beer advertisements littering the wall. But a couple of things were different. First, there weren’t football or hockey games playing on the television. From the moans and groans alone, Billy knew it was hardcore pornography. A typical strip club would’ve been the lesser of the evils. He looked down at Carolyn, her hands still plastered over his eyes. There weren’t enough hands to cover her ears.
God help me
, he thought.

The waitresses wore only thongs and platform heels. Billy and Carolyn were seated by a naked French girl; her soft features said she was probably in her late teens. She had jet-black straight hair, sort of like Cher back in the day, and that’s where Billy kept his focus. She seated them, and cheerfully spread plastic menus on the table as if they were at the Olive Garden. “Your waitress, Angelique, will be with you in a moment,” she said in a sweet French accent and strutted away.

Billy looked around the dark, shadowy porn bar. The crowd was not the uppity French, leather crowd. It was the blue-collar, bad mullet crowd, almost straight out of a Steelers bar back in Johnstown. He spotted Bronson sitting at a table across the room. He was so glued to the porn that he wouldn’t have noticed Billy and Carolyn if they started doing naked Karaoke on top of their table.

Their waitress sashayed to their table. While most of the naked waitresses were in the “under thirty” age demographic, Angelique was older, although probably not as old as she looked, and gave off the impression she’d been livin’ the hard life a little too hard. Her bad blonde dye job couldn’t hide her tar-colored roots, she had a topographical map of lines on her face, and it looked like she’d gotten the senior discount on the boob job.

“Bonjour,” she greeted them.

“English,” Billy said.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“Coffee for me,” he looked at Carolyn, hands still over her eyes, “and milk for her. Do you have strawberry milk?”

“Chocolate.”

“That’ll do.”

Angelique turned her attention to Carolyn. “Well, aren’t you a cute thing.”

“I’m actually a princess,” she said. It was a good thing she couldn’t feel pain, because it would be impossible to hold hands for that long in the same position if she did.

“Then you came to the right place,” Angelique said and turned her attention to Billy, “Is it your daughter?”

“No, she’s a friend.”

The woman didn’t blink at the strange statement, or even raise an eyebrow at the child’s presence. “I’ll be back for your order in a few moments, can I get you anything in the meantime?” she asked casually.

He remembered that he just spent his last money to scar Carolyn for life. “Do you a have an ATM machine?”

She turned her naked body and jiggled a point toward a far corner. Without taking his eyes off Carolyn, Billy moved to the machine and took out three hundred dollars with Dana’s ATM card, knowing he just did a big favor for those looking for them.

When Billy returned to the table, he focused on Bronson. Angelique was his waitress too, and maybe more, because the two of them went off to the bathroom together. Billy thought about following—
what if he’s escaping out a back entrance?
—but he decided against it. Cornering the Special Ops trained soldier in a small bathroom seemed like a good way to get himself killed.

Suddenly Carolyn blurted out, “Okay, I’m ready for my surprise! Ready or not, here I come!”

She removed her hands from her eyes and stared in wonderment. “Wow, I didn’t know Les Princesses didn’t wear clothes!”

Billy tried to cover her eyes with his hands, but the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. He rationalized that if she could witness a man burn himself to death, then how bad could a little nudity be?

“It’s just their birthday today, so they’re wearing their birthday suits.”

“I like birthdays.”

Bronson exited the bathroom with Angelique at his side, stealing away Billy’s attention. By the look on his face, he seemed to like birthdays also. And his preoccupation was working in Billy’s favor. Bronson hadn’t even as much as glanced in Billy and Carolyn’s direction since they arrived.

When Angelique returned to their table, Billy requested a move to a “porn free” section of the place, if there was such a thing. She obliged, leading them into a corner room. From there, Billy could still strategically view Bronson, but could shield Carolyn from the debauchery. Angelique replaced the porn on their television with the Canadiens game, which enthralled Carolyn, even if she did mention multiple times that they were sposed to watch it in person.

They then ordered food.
Just a late night trip to Denny’s
, Billy tried to convince himself. Pancakes for Carolyn, while Billy got the le Camionneur—French for “The Trucker”—that featured three eggs, three meats, French toast and feves au lard.

As they munched on their food and watched the Canadiens take a one goal lead over the Boston Bruins, both Bronson and Angelique got up and left. Angelique had put on clothes, but not much.

Billy immediately picked up an exhausted Carolyn and began to follow, forcing her to leave the remains of her syrup-doused pancakes. They passed the scowling bouncer as they shot out the door. Luckily, it was hard to miss the peroxided locks of Angelique in the distance. But not so luckily, Bronson had also spotted them. He grabbed Angelique’s hand and began to run, practically dragging her in her towering platform heels.

“Calvin sent us!” Billy yelled in desperation.

But they couldn’t hear him. Angelique used her assets to flag a cab and they sped south on Hochelaga. And just like that, they were gone.

Chapter 51

Billy figured he could spend the upcoming days scouting out St. Joseph’s Oratory and Les Princesses. But he knew it would be futile. Bronson would be long gone by the time the sun rose over the St. Lawrence River. And with their own hourglass running out of sand, Billy had to find him, and find him now.

He studied a map in his travel guide.
Where would they go?
The heavily populated St. Catherine’s Street was close by, and the most obvious choice. Or maybe Bronson would return to the Oratory, looking for one final shot at a miracle. But Billy doubted that. Bronson was trained to be cold-blooded smart in these types of situations. He wouldn’t return to any location he suspected he’d been followed to.

According to Calvin, Bronson came straight to Montreal not long after they had escaped from Iran, looking for the miracle cure for CIPA. Using that timeline, he’d only been in the area a couple months and most likely didn’t have any money.

He again stared at the map, thinking that Bronson must reside close to Les Princesses. It wasn’t the kind of place you hear about, it’s a place you bump into one day. And since Bronson seemed to be spending most of his free time in a church that was on the opposite side of the city, he doubted he heard of it via word of mouth.

Then something gave Billy pause. Just a few streets to the west, running north and south, was St. Joseph’s Boulevard. Technically, Bronson came to Montreal to look for his miracle, but more specifically, he was making a pilgrimage to St. Joseph’s Oratory to find it. Billy could visualize Bronson, fresh to the world outside the camp, naively telling a cab driver to bring him to St. Joseph. The driver brought him to St. Joseph Boulevard, instead of the cathedral of the same name, and once there, any good soldier knows to set up camp first.

Billy knew he was grasping at straws, but it’s all he had at this point, so he instructed their cab driver to bring them to St. Joseph’s Boulevard. They exited in a section called Le Plateau. It was an eccentric neighborhood that reminded Billy of Greenwich Village. Even at such a late hour, there was an energy in the air. Street musicians strummed acoustic guitars, while ethnically diverse groups of revelers mingled about, seemingly in no hurry. The preferred form of transportation was bicycles of all makes and models. There were very few cars. It seemed like a place where a guy like Bronson Rose could fade into the eclectic background.

They didn’t walk far before hearing a sound Billy recognized. It had been over a month since he was with someone—Kaylee Scroggins—but he knew all too well the sound of loveless sex. It was different, almost like two animals wailing in the wild. Never the soft giggles of people in love.

He followed the sound toward a duplex apartment building. Under its exterior staircase, he found a shirtless Bronson Rose with his pants around his ankles, and Angelique kneeling before him.

“Is she praying?” Carolyn asked with a curious look.

Billy wasn’t touching that one. And he didn’t have time, anyway. In a matter of seconds, Bronson was zipped up and pointing a gun right at them.

“What do you want?” Bronson screeched. He kept nervously moving the gun back and forth between Billy and Carolyn. His paranoia was on the ledge, ready to leap.

Angelique didn’t appear the bit embarrassed by her somewhat awkward position. She methodically stood and re-attached her bra, then pulled her halter-top over her head.

“I need to talk to you,” Billy addressed Bronson.

“You’ve been following me all day. The church—the bus—Les Princesses.”

“Calvin sent me. I didn’t want to alarm you—I just need to talk to you.”

He looked older than Calvin. And now seeing him without his shirt, Billy noticed burn marks on his chest. The scars of war. A medallion of a long-stemmed rose hung over his heart as if it were protecting it. He also had the matching rose tattoo. His eyes were old, but had a childish naiveté to them. Kind of like an Alzheimer’s patient.

Bronson focused the gun on Billy’s dimpled chin. “Nobody’s bringing me back to the camp, do you hear me? You go back and tell the trainers that!”

“I’m not with the trainers.”

“I will not fall for your lies. Only the trainers would know about Calvin escaping.” His eyes began jitterbugging. “Where are the rest of them? You are trying to distract me to allow your squad to execute a raid. I know the tactics as well as you.”

“I’m not with the trainers or Operation Anesthesia. Calvin came to me—he saved Carolyn—she has the anesthesia.”

Carolyn knew the drill. “I can’t feel my boo-boos.”

“Then she won’t feel a thing when I shoot her,” he said, pointing the gun toward her rosy cheeks.

She didn’t seem fazed by the threat, and asked Bronson, “Are you a hunter?”

The question frazzled him. “Why do you say that?”

“Then why do you got a gun?”

“To protect myself from the trainers.”

“My daddy is a hunter.”

He pushed the gun to her temple. “Using a foal with anesthesia to lure me is an evil trick, even for the trainers.”

“I’m not with the trainers,” Billy argued.

“Please put the gun down, baby,” Angelique tried to soothe the situation. “Let’s go upstairs. These people mean you no harm.”

Bronson didn’t budge. The gun remained locked on Billy and Carolyn, again alternating the deadly point back and forth between them.

“Calvin told us about your pact. The triangle. Only Calvin knew where you were, and only you know where André is. And he told us about the tattoo and necklace,” Billy begged, he knew a trainer wouldn’t know that. And Calvin was trained not to give in to torture if the trainers had found him. He would never have told of their pact. At least that’s what Billy was counting on.

Bronson held the gun at Billy for a few more seconds, and then lowered it.