Enforcer (20 page)

“And you didn’t think to ask why you were getting paid double your salary for each of these jobs?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sure some part of me did, but I was happy to be playing hockey and making almost a thousand extra a week, and in cash at that. I thought at first it was just what he’d promised me, I’d be the has-been star who was getting a new start, and since the league only allows us to get paid two-fifty per week, this was my extra, under-the-table pay.

“But then about a year in, he asked me if I would be willing to do a bit more hands-on work. When he explained that I simply had to go with one of his employees to see someone that hadn’t paid back a loan, I didn’t even think anything of it. The guy I had to go with, he was dressed in a pretty snappy business suit, so I thought he was a lawyer, and maybe the client was the kind who might get nasty. I thought I was protecting his lawyer.

“But the ‘lawyer’ turned out to be another Romanian guy, a henchman I guess. We went to this client’s business out in Meridian, and the Romanian told the guy that he was to pay today, and pay this much each week until it was paid, or I was going to put his face through one of the glass cases. The client looked like he was going to piss himself. I must have scared him, as he opened the register and gave Vadim the money. He never took his eyes off me, either.

“I wasn’t happy about it, and when I told Mr. Ojacarcu I hadn’t signed on for that kind of thing, he laughed and handed me an envelope with five grand in it. Told me it was my pay for the job and a bonus for being professional about it. I suppose I could have opted out right then, walked away from him and hockey, but I wouldn’t get to play anywhere professionally if I did that. He had my contract, and if I broke the contract, he could get me barred from any league in North America, and the European leagues as well.”

“Why didn’t you just go to the police then? That would probably have voided the contract, right?” Dana asked, fully engrossed in his story now.

“I could have. But I’d get blacklisted from the pro leagues, and I’m in the UPHL, just about the bottom of the barrel in terms of professional hockey. The character clauses in the contracts forbid players from doing illegal things, and extortion and intimidation are pretty illegal. But that wasn’t what made me keep my mouth shut. It wasn’t the money either.

“The money was great, but I’d just spent an evening with a huge Romanian thug who told another man he’d have me put the guy’s face through a solid glass showcase. If Mr. Ojacarcu had a guy like Vadim who could go around making threats that would get anyone else arrested, what did that mean for me? Would he send Vadim and maybe four or five other guys after me?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, understanding a little better how deeply entrenched Connor had become.

“It’s not your fault, don’t be sorry,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand this time. “It’s my fault. Once I knew what was really up, I should have left. But I couldn’t let go of hockey, and I didn’t think me just being there as a threat was really all that bad for the money I was able to make.

“And then I started following through on some of those threats that Vadim and this other guy Petre would make to clients. I figured these guys, these
clients
, they knew what kind of arrangement they were getting into, borrowing from a guy like Ojacarcu instead of doing formal loans through a bank. After a while, it wasn’t just clients that weren’t paying loans. I was roughing up men and women who crossed him or stole from him, all kinds of things.

“But I always told myself that these people had made a conscious choice to enter into these agreements or commit these thefts against the guy who was paying me. I never had to beat up a kid, and I never hit anyone in front of a kid either. That was, and still is, my line. But everyone else? Maybe they didn’t deserve it, but I had my job and they had their responsibilities.”

“How is it,” she asked, “that you are the guy who has fans screaming his name, but no one recognizes you? It seems kind of stupid to send out the face of the team to intimidate people.”

“It seems that way,” he agreed. “But there’s a couple of reasons why no one says anything. The main reason is that no one other than a hockey fan recognizes me. I do some commercials and ads for sure, but how often do you pay attention to a commercial on television at two in the morning? Boise is a great town, but it isn’t a hockey town. If I played football for the Broncos, everyone in the state would recognize me, I’m sure. And then there’s the other hockey team, the Steelheads. They’re in the ECHL, a few rungs up the ladder from the UPHL. They have a couple guys who are ten times more famous or recognizable than me.

“Another reason is the people I typically have to visit not only aren’t hockey fans, but they’re shady characters. Thieves, drug dealers, things like that. They don’t want any attention drawn to them. And they don’t want any more attention from Mr. Ojacarcu. Keeping their mouths shut about the possibility of recognizing me is more important than having one of the boss’ thugs show up and actually stuff their head through a plate glass case.”

“God, Connor,” Dana said. “You got yourself in deep.”

She squeezed his hand. He looked in her eyes, trying to see if she felt sorry for him or felt repulsed by him. He wasn’t sure he could deal with either. She didn’t say anything else, the silence growing as they stared at each other, Connor barely able to look her in the eyes.

“Yeah,” he said, breaking the silence. “I did. And it kept getting worse, but I didn’t want to see it. I like being the tough guy on the team, even if I only get a couple of shifts per game. I guess I miss having the glory I had when I was growing up and everyone in hockey talked about me, cheered me on.”

“Is it really like that? Like a cult? From when you were five?”

Connor laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard hockey referred to as a ‘cult’ before, but that’s kind of a good descriptor if you are Canadian. I had skates on my feet when I was three, by five I was scoring goals in Initiation leagues, and by ten I was scoring two hundred points a season against kids my own age. At thirteen I was playing Bantam and still scoring two hundred points a season against kids a year or two older than me.

“My name came up in every newspaper and all of the sports networks. Hockey to Canada is like football to Texas. It’s the national sport. Hockey Night In Canada is like Monday Night Football, except it seems like the entire country watches hockey. When they started talking about me being the next Gretzky or Lemieux, that drove up the hype. I was tearing up the junior leagues, and had won a gold medal in the World Juniors at sixteen and again at seventeen.

“I was going to be the number one pick in the NHL draft when I turned eighteen, according to Don Cherry and everyone else. We were playing Sweden in the World Juniors, trying to get to the gold medal game, when I had the accident. From what I read and saw on YouTube and everywhere else, it was like the Queen had died when it happened. It was an ugly accident, but the entire country of Canada seemed to take it personally that I almost died. They weren’t mad at the kid from Sweden. They were mad at God, I guess, or whatever hockey gods some prayed to.”

“So, it’s like a cult then,” Dana said in awe.

“I suppose,” Connor said with a laugh. “I was part of that cult too. I wanted to be Gretzky, Lemieux, Yzerman, all the NHL stars as I was growing up. Every time I was on the ice, I was Gretzky in game seven of the finals, scoring the winning goal. No different than American kids growing up pretending to be Jordan making the winning basket or Rice catching the winning touchdown pass.”

“What are you going to do?” Dana asked.

“About what?”

“About this woman? About what you do for the owner.”

“Jera… I don’t know. I’m trying to think of something. I can’t send her back there. She can’t live with me. I guess I’m winging it for the moment, but I have to keep her safe until I can think of something. No one deserves to be treated like that. As for Ojacarcu, for right now I’m going to do nothing. I can’t. He owns my contract until the end of next season.

“Like I said, if I quit, I’ll never play hockey again. I’m more afraid of what he’d do beyond hockey though. I’m not really afraid of him if we were locked in a room together, but he has muscle working for him, as corny as that sounds. And he plays for keeps. He’s not some two-bit wanna-be. I think he has connections to the old country. Scary connections.

“I’m hoping that in another year I can get traded, but I doubt he’ll let me go that easily. Maybe I’ll get ‘injured’ and can’t play. When my contract is up, he’s going to pressure me into re-signing, but I’m going to tell him I’m tired of hockey, that I want to go home to Macklin. I’m not real hopeful he’s going to allow that.”

“So you’re going to just keep beating people up until then?” Dana didn’t like his choices at all.

“What else can I do? Now I also have to protect you,” he said.

“What do you mean, protect me? I’m not part of this at all.”

“For now. If Ojacarcu finds out that I’ve told you any of this, you’ll end up getting a visit from one of these Romanians. I can guess how it will go, and it won’t be good for you. They don’t seem to care what gender you are when they hurt people.”

“Goddammit, Connor,” she said, pulling her hand away.

“I’m sorry, Dana,” he said, reaching for her across the table, getting only empty air. “I told you I didn’t want to say anything, that it would only end up being dangerous for you.” Connor’s mind kept going back to Ilinca and Helen.

“You shouldn’t have told me then!” she said, louder than she wanted to. “Why didn’t you just let me walk away?”

“I can’t,” he said, looking down at the table. “I don’t want you to walk away. You’re the only normal thing in my life.”

CHAPTER 17

“This is a very disturbing accusation, Connor,” Mr. Ojacarcu said.

“Which part of it is disturbing?” Connor asked him. “The part about that asshole forcing this girl to wear a collar and be a prostitute? Or the part about him beating the hell out of her, or letting other men beat the hell out of her?”

Dracul stepped forward, his feet silent on the plush red carpeting of Ojacarcu’s office. The boss held out a hand, letting Dracul know it wasn’t necessary to hurt Connor. Yet.

“The disturbing part,” Ojacarcu said, “is how you have been given a simple job of collecting from a client, and somehow you have ended up kidnapping the client’s girlfriend.”

“Bullshit,” Connor replied. “I didn’t kidnap her, steal her, even entice her. I hate the woman, if you really want to know. But she called me on her own. How the fuck am I kidnapping her if she’s trying to escape getting another black eye, or worse, from some piece of shit meth dealer?”

His anger made his voice rise, causing Dracul to take another step toward him. Ojacarcu nodded to Dracul, who grabbed Connor’s bicep, pulling him out of the chair while driving his other fist deep into Connor’s stomach. Connor grunted and doubled over, coughing as he tried to get his breath back. Dracul pushed him back into the chair.

“You must always show respect, Connor,” Ojacarcu said. “Respect means knowing who is in charge. Respect means following the rules that are made by the one in charge. Respect is never raising your voice to me.”

The boss nodded toward Dracul again, and the big Romanian put the same amount of force into his second punch to Connor’s guts as he had the first. This time Connor fell out to the floor, groaning and clutching his stomach. He’d taken plenty of punches to his abdominal area in his long fighting career, but he’d never taken a hit as hard as the two Dracul had punished him with.

“Now, here is how we are going to solve this little dispute between you two. Since Mr. Fallon still has not repaid the balance of his personal loan with me, and this woman, Jera, is an income stream that is owned by Mr. Fallon, she will become my income stream until the loan is repaid.”

“You can’t be serious,” Connor said, rising from the carpet to sit in the chair again. He gave Dracul a look that could cut hardened steel, but the Romanian’s face remained impassive. Somewhere behind those eyes, the man was enjoying hurting him, he was sure of it.

“Why wouldn’t I be serious?” Ojacarcu asked, surprised.

“She’s not a fucking vending machine that can be borrowed and emptied of cash at everyone else’s leisure,” Connor said.

“I disagree,” his boss said. “She makes an income for Mr. Fallon. Since Mr. Fallon is behind in his personal arrangement with me, she will make an income for me. Surely you cannot object. She is nothing to you, yes? You did say you hated her. And you know I will not allow her to be physically harmed while she is in my employ.”

“She’s not property, you fucking asshole!” Connor shouted.

Ojacarcu nodded to Dracul again, but this time Connor was ready for him. He wasn’t going to let the man get a third punch to his stomach. He was sure he’d already be passing blood in his stool. The pain was receding slowly back to a dull throb instead of a sharp, agonizing feeling of his stomach rupturing.

He was ready for Dracul, but he had forgotten about Vadim and Petre. Each of them grabbed one of his arms, holding him while he roared and kicked out with his legs, beginning to panic. Petre let go of his arm long enough to drive a fist into his guts, ceasing Connor’s struggles. Dracul stepped in front of Connor and raised his fist. Ojacarcu’s cough interrupted him before he could deliver the blow.