Enforcer (14 page)

Ojacarcu opened a drawer and pulled out an overstuffed white envelope. He slid it across the desk. When Connor didn’t make a move to take it, the Romanian waved a hand at it to let him know he needed to pick it up. Connor grabbed the envelope, feeling its weight. When he opened it, he was shocked by the amount of money in it. He didn’t know how much there was, but from what he could see, every bill had Benjamin Franklin on it.

“A little taste of what loyalty means to me,” Ojacarcu said.

“Thank you,” was all Connor could say. He stuffed the envelope into his coat pocket.

“Look, Connor,” his boss said, leaning forward, “I am sure you are not happy about the job you had to do. The truth is, I had no one else who could assist Dracul. All of my other employees were indisposed. I needed someone I could trust. I trust Dracul, very much so, but those kinds of jobs… they require two persons at least. If something were to go wrong and there was only one of you…”

“I think Dracul could handle ten men at once,” Connor said, regretting his tone immediately.

Ojacarcu only laughed. “I’m sure he could, maybe even a hundred men. But I’ve been in this business a long time, and I’ve learned that if something can go wrong, it will when you do not prepare. What is that law called?”

“Murphy’s Law,” Connor said.

“Yes, yes. Murphy’s Law. You understand, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Connor answered.

“I have no doubt that you do. We’ll be leaving for Denver on Tuesday. I’ll have you flown to Tuscon for your game by Tuesday night, Wednesday morning at the latest. Bring warm clothes, and make sure you send along your overnight bags with the team so they will be waiting for you when you arrive in Tuscon.”

Ojacarcu stood up, extending a hand to Connor to let him know the meeting was over. Connor stood and shook the hand, once again surprised by the strength of his boss’ grip.

*****

“I have to fly to Denver tomorrow,” Connor said to Dana as they sat in the recliner in his living room.

“I thought you guys played in Phoenix,” she said.

“Tuscon. The league wants me and Mr. Ojacarcu to do a promotional video or something,” he said, rubbing his hand along the thigh that she had draped over his legs.

“You don’t even know what you’re going to be doing?” she asked.

“I don’t ask anymore. I just go where I’m told.”

“The life of a professional hockey player,” she laughed, kissing him along his neck. “Do you get any ‘adult’ channels?”

Connor’s shocked look made her laugh again. She reached for the remote and turned the television off, then extricated herself from the recliner and gave his hand a tug to let him know he was to follow her into the bedroom. After, both of them panting, they talked about trivial things. He asked her about her job, why she didn’t have a boyfriend, what she was studying in college. She asked him about where he grew up, why hockey was such a big deal to Canada, and what he planned to do after his career was over. They fell asleep, her head on his chest, her legs wrapped around his.

*****

“Hello, my name is Connor Dunsmore, right winger for the Boise Bombers,” Connor said into the camera, trying to keep from squinting at the bright lights that seemed to penetrate him from all directions.

“And I am Costache Ojacarcu, owner of the Boise Bombers,” his boss said.

“We would like to invite all of you to donate to the International Children’s Leukemia Society,” Connor continued. “Hundreds of thousands of children across the world are afflicted with this deadly disease—”

“And without your support, these innocent children will never get to grow up, to experience life to its fullest,” Ojacarcu finished for him.

“They’ll never graduate from school, never play hockey or any other sport, they’ll never fall in love and have children of their own,” Connor went on.

“Please, visit the website shown on your screen, and donate to to the International Children’s Leukemia Society, for their sake,” Ojacarcu said into the camera.

“Help us ‘knock out’ children’s cancer once and for all,” Connor said, throwing a fake jab toward the camera as he said the tag line.

“With your support, we can reach our goal,” Ojacarcu finished.

The director had told them that effects would be added during post-production, and there would be the sound of a puck being hit with a stick, followed by a goal horn and a crowd cheering. Connor was glad to help the ICLS, no matter how cheesy the commercial was. He hoped he wasn’t as wooden as most of the athletes were who made commercials.

The two shook hands with the film crew and made their way out of the studio. A limousine waited for them at the curb, the driver standing at attention in the snow. The door shut behind Connor, who was thankful the heater had been left on. The two men rode in silence as the driver merged into traffic.

“Foarte bine,” Ojacarcu finally said to Connor.
Very good.
“We didn’t even need a second take!”

“Yeah,” Connor replied.

“Derek is taking us to the airport. I have a flight booked for you to Phoenix, and a rental car for you to get to Tuscon. I tried to get a direct flight, but there were none available this late. You should be at the hotel by eleven or so, more than enough time to get some rest before your game.”

“Thank you.”

“It is the least I could do. Thank you for coming and helping me. This is good publicity for you, and for the team. It might even lead to more endorsements.”

“Thank you.”

“When you get back to Boise, I have another job for you,” Ojacarcu said, watching Connor’s face.

Connor was torn between fear that he’d have to do another job with Dracul, and rage that made him want to leap across the empty space between them and choke his boss until Ojacarcu’s face looked like Travis Benkula’s. He nodded at his boss.

“Don’t worry, this is a standard job. You will be with Petre.” He winked at Connor. “A client has decided that paying me is too much trouble. This client, he is not such a good client, not like Mr. Fallon. I won’t suggest you break anything, but if you do, I won’t be upset. If this client doesn’t see things our way, I will have no choice but to send Dracul to visit him.”

Connor’s stomach turned at the thought of what Dracul would do to the man. Would it be another visit to the landfill? He didn’t want to know. He’d already learned too much about his boss. It wasn’t like he didn’t have an idea of just how hard the man was, how serious he could be when someone crossed him, but thinking that his boss might be the kind of man who ordered someone’s death was a lot different than knowing for a fact that he had no qualms about murdering someone who crossed him.

“Don’t sweat it,” Ojacarcu said to him, opening a bottle of scotch from the limo’s mini-bar. “The job you helped Dracul with, it was a one-time thing, I assure you. I know it was distasteful. Dracul said you took no pleasure in it, that you threw up after. I understand. The first time I had to do a job for Mr. Miklos back in Romania, I did the same thing. It was hard, but it had to be done.”

Connor said nothing, only stared out the limo’s window as it made its way through the snowy freeway traffic toward Denver International. Dana was on his mind. He longed for the feel of her hips in his hands, her hair sprawling over his chest as she lightly snored after climax. Over the last week, he’d started to seriously think about getting out of Boise. He wouldn’t be able to play hockey anywhere else unless Ojacarcu released him from his contract, something that wasn’t likely to happen until the end of the next season.

Dana told him she would be done with her degree by then. He would fantasize that they’d still be together, that she’d want to run away with him. Neither of them had discussed anything of the sort. They’d never discussed any kind of commitment, steering clear of it mostly because they were too busy having sex when they were together. After, they’d talk about all sorts of things, but to Connor, it felt like she avoided the subject of where they were as a couple, and where they were headed, if anywhere.

He’d never mentioned the long string of women who had come before her, and she’d never mentioned anyone other than a boyfriend she’d had back in high school, the one who had taken her virginity. Connor was usually confident when it came to women. He’d never had to deal with rejection before, but he was afraid she would laugh at him and tell him that he was just a fling for her, a conquest. He had never before dreaded the word “no” as much as he did when thinking of asking her to stay with him, to run away with him.

*****

The plane ride was bumpy, making his stomach roil and grumble the entire flight. He wanted alcohol badly, but he avoided it, instead asking the flight attendant for bottled water. He tried to eat the snack peanuts that were handed out, but after chewing the first one and swallowing, he felt like throwing up. He tried to sleep, even though the plane rumbled and vibrated enough make him feel queasy. He didn’t want to freak everyone out and have an Air Marshal hold him at gunpoint should he have a nightmare and wake up screaming. There were far too many children on the plane to put them through such trauma.

Phoenix was a different world than Denver. January and February had racked up almost three feet of snow in the Mile High City. When he stepped out of the airport in Phoenix to grab the shuttle to the rental car lot, he thought he would die of heat stroke. It was a balmy seventy degrees at eight o’clock. By the time the shuttle pulled into the North American Car Rental lot, he was sweating as if he’d already played a few shifts in a game.

The man at the counter smiled and gave him the keys to a newer Ford hybrid. Connor walked to the car and threw his coat in the back seat, along with the small overnight bag he had taken to Denver. After he pulled out of the lot and followed the sultry voice of the GPS unit to the freeway, his thoughts wandered back to Dana, her soft skin, her thick, silky, dark red hair, and her subtle brilliance.

She was working toward an electrical engineering degree so she could work for one of the Silicon Valley tech firms designing microchips or circuit boards. Connor had only the basic understanding of the technical details of the devices he used, and knew he wasn’t nearly as smart as Dana. GPS, phone, laptop, satellite receiver, all of them just worked for him. Dana was the type of woman who could probably tear all of them apart and tell him exactly what each tiny component did, and how.

Connor fancied himself a decently intelligent person, but he wasn’t even close to being in her league. All during his junior hockey days, he’d had to study and do schoolwork between games, whether on the road or not. The junior leagues demanded it, and he had a free ride to any college he wanted to attend in Canada if he ever went back home, though he had never had any real interest in doing that. If he ever returned home, he planned to enroll in the National Coaching Certification Program so he could continue his career in hockey.

During the two hour drive to Tuscon, he played out scenario after scenario where he asked Dana to run away with him, to move to Canada, even to marry him. Every so often as he went through each scenario, Jera would pop into his mind. Jera the dirty, meth-addicted skank. The prostitute. The woman who seemed to be okay with being abused, and seemed content to never take a shower. Jera. Dana. Jera. Dana.

The two women were so completely different from each other. Dana was educated, funny, she smelled like a sweet flower, tasted even sweeter, was a terrific lover, and made him laugh with her humor. Jera was a screechy, unwashed harpy with a foul mouth, and a fouler stench. He wasn’t even sure if her skin was dark from genetics, or from the fact that she and water seemed to be mortal enemies.

For some reason, Jera wouldn’t completely vacate from his thoughts. Connor couldn’t help himself from thinking about how she let men use and abuse her, how she was trapped in a situation she might not have any control over anymore, thanks to people like Larry and drugs like methamphetamine. Maybe she liked fucking men for money or dope. Maybe she liked being abused. Why else would she stick around for it?

That thought led him to his own situation. He’d become an accomplice in a brutal murder. He’d allowed himself to become a henchman for a Romanian gangster. Why did he stick around? What reasons could there be for him to continue to live the way he did? Connor couldn’t think of a good answer, and instead of trying to figure it out, he cranked up the radio as loud as it would go without the speakers distorting. He tried his best to mentally prepare himself for the upcoming game instead of the two women warring within his head for his heart.

One of them couldn’t possibly know how he felt, the other probably did and said nothing. One wanted to kill him, based on the look in her eyes whenever they were near each other. Not to mention the constant insults and vulgarities she screeched at him, the empty threats grating on his nerves because of her voice. The other wanted to hold him, touch him, laugh with him, get under the sheets with him. By the time he pulled into the hotel parking lot, he realized he had come to no conclusions at all, other than he was in trouble emotionally, a new territory for him.

CHAPTER 13

“You have good fight last night!” Petre exclaimed as he started the car.

“You didn’t even listen to the game, did you?” Connor asked with a frown.