Enforcer (23 page)

Ojacarcu opened the lid of his laptop and ignored them. According to Petre’s tap on his shoulder, the meeting was over. Jera and Connor made their way to the door, Petre and Vadim following. Petre closed the door behind him, and the four walked down the hallway to the service elevator. No one spoke, each lost in their own thoughts.

When the elevator reached the bottom, Petre stepped out and motioned to Connor and Jera. Vadim stayed behind, waiting in the elevator as the three walked to one of the Lincolns. Petre reached into his pocket and removed the car’s key along with a white security swipe card.

“It is full of gas,” Petre said, his face showing no emotion. “You will be paid when you deliver each day.”

They stood next to the black luxury car for a while, the silence echoing throughout the underground parking level. Petre looked bored, finally opening the rear door, ushering Jera into the car. He closed the door after she was in, then turned to Connor.

“This is trouble,” Petre said. “There will be no good in this.” He walked back to the elevator without another word.

Connor got in behind the wheel. He adjusted the side mirrors after starting the car, then adjusted the rearview mirror until he could see Jera’s eyes. The shadows of the garage made her dark features hard to see, but the overhead fluorescents caught enough of the tears on her cheeks to cause little flashes in the mirror.

CHAPTER 19

Connor watched the light traffic that littered Cole Road from his parking spot in the Desert Valley apartment complex parking lot. He checked his phone for the twentieth time in the last few minutes, wishing Dana would reply to his text. He’d let her know he wouldn’t be home for a while, possibly all night, but not the details of why. She would know that it had to do with his escorted visit to Ojacarcu, but that wouldn’t make her any less upset. They’d planned to spend the entire day together being lazy and lounging around.

Connor’s mind was in the midst of a panic, desperate to find a way to break the news of his new
job
to her without it destroying everything he’d rebuilt in the last month. Dana had finally overcome her fear that Ojacarcu would send one of his thugs to collect her, and they’d been smart about spending time together, usually at her place, just to avoid being seen by anyone who might get word back to the boss, Dracul, or any of the other suits. Connor’s friendship with Petre and Vadim was strained by his unwillingness to trust either of them with any important details about his life.

He checked his phone again. Nothing. He glanced up at the apartment window where Jera entertained her client, an older gentleman who looked like he could afford a much higher standard of living than Desert Valley. Not that the area was a ghetto. There really wasn’t such a thing in Boise, nothing familiar to a resident of a place like Chicago or Houston. Desert Valley wasn’t trashy. It was a newer complex, built across the street from a middle school in an older, well-kept area west of downtown. Connor figured the client had a place up in the foothills above the city, and only used the apartment for dalliances or other business that couldn’t be taken care of in the open.

His phone buzzed. He swiped his finger across the screen and felt his body go hot and cold as he read Dana’s text. She understood, but was headed home to hit the books if he wasn’t going to be around. Connor frowned. It was hard to determine the emotional meaning from a text, but hers was to the point, and he could sense she’d let him know how she felt when they got together again. He wouldn’t be able to carry on a conversation through text, and she would be short with him if he called her. He’d have to wait until the morning when he went for his coffee to apologize and gauge her level of disappointment.

Ten minutes later Jera opened the passenger door and got in the car. Connor made no move to turn the key and get the Lincoln moving. He tried to watch her face, but she kept it pointed down and away from him.

“What?” she asked after a few minutes of silence.

“I… where do you need to go next?” he asked.

Jera looked at him as if he was stupid. “I need to go wash my snatch out,” she said with venom before looking away again.

“Okay,” Connor said, starting the car.

Her words hurt him, the guilt consuming him for putting her, and himself as well, in this situation. He tried to tell himself that he’d done the right thing by helping her escape from Larry Fallon. It sounded like a lie when he compared it to the position she was in now. He wondered if it was worth the fleeting moment of happiness he’d felt when he picked her up at the Gas-Mart, thinking he was doing her a great service. That fleeting moment of happiness was most likely destined to trample the happiness he’d found with Dana into dust.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a while. “I don’t know what your schedule is or… anything like that.”

“Don’t talk to me, you piece of shit,” Jera said. “Don’t you
dare
fucking talk to me.”

“Listen, I didn’t want for this to happen, I was only tr—”

“Don’t fucking talk to me!” she shrieked at him, her face an ugly, twisted mask of hate, tears creating rivers of mascara that led into salt flats of pancake and foundation mud.

“Okay,” he said, and looked straight ahead.

Is this what you risked Dana for?
His mind began to panic again.
You risked your own ass for her? You rescue her and Dracul makes you shit blood for a week? Good fucking job, dumbass.
He pulled up to the apartments Ojacarcu kept for his employees, whether it was Petre and his pals, the cooks and the cutters for his drug operation, or the working girls.

“I’ll wait,” he said, mostly to the door as it slammed before he got the words all the way out.

He checked his phone again. Dana was in silent mode. Jera was in harpy mode. Ojacarcu was in torture mode. He decided he was in hell mode.

*****

Connor glanced up from his phone as headlights lit up the stop sign in front of him. The car passed where he had parked, stopping at the intersection before continuing along East Crestline Drive. He wished he was in the car with whoever had just driven by him, heading back down out of the foothills and into town. Instead, he looked over at the house where Jera was doing her business.

She’d been a nightmare all afternoon and into the evening. Each time she would finish with a client, he would take her back to the apartments. She would go inside, return fifteen minutes later in a new outfit and a fresh new painted-on face. Jera had only cried once, after her first client when she’d screamed at Connor. The rest of the time she had a detached look about her, eyes made of dull glass, her movements robotic.

He’d had a good look at her arms a couple of times. He felt slightly better when he saw there were no track marks from needles. He wasn’t an expert on junkies, and he knew they could inject their poison in many places, but the crook of the elbow was the most popular when it came to dope addicts on television and in movies.

Petre had told him how a lot of the male prostitutes would inject in the area under the scrotum to keep the evidence hidden. Petre had also laughed when Connor suggested a male prostitute might end up showing a lot of what was under his scrotum in that line of work. He’d shrugged and told Connor that people would stick needles in all kinds of places to avoid track marks showing on their arms. Unless they were full-blown addicts, then they didn’t give a damn anymore about anything except getting high.

He checked his phone for what felt like the millionth time, seeing nothing new except the changing numbers of the clock. Almost midnight. He’d been driving his charge around for fourteen hours, his hope that any more clients would wait until the next day kept dying with each new ding of her pager. The pager would give her the address of the next stop, and there would be a code of letters or numbers after it. He tried to imagine what they could mean but came up blank.

Jera opened the door next to him, breaking his thought process. He hadn’t been paying attention, and for a moment he had the fear that Dracul had come for him. Connor wasn’t afraid of anyone in hockey, but the Romanian produced a cold fear in him that made his testicles crawl up into his body.

“Home?” he asked.

Jera nodded. He started the car and they made their way down out of the foothills and into the one-way grid of downtown. He wanted to ask if she was done for the night, but he held his question. Connor realized he hadn’t eaten anything except for a protein bar, which had tasted like cardboard smothered in unsweetened chocolate. His ass hurt, he was tired, and he needed to get some blood flowing through his body.

They pulled up to her apartment. She turned to him and said, “I have an appointment at noon in Nampa. Be here by eleven.”

He didn’t bother to reply to the door that slammed shut.

*****

“Connor, I don’t have time for this right now.” Dana looked angry, customer orders piling up around her. Some of the customers gave him a dirty look at his interference, while others looked away, too embarrassed to watch a relationship crumble right in front of them.

“I don’t know when I’m going to get a chance to talk to you again,” he said, trying to talk low enough to keep his fellow customers from eavesdropping on the drama unfolding in front of them.

“Look, I get off at one. Come by then. I have to get back to work.”

“I can’t make it then, that’s what I keep telling you.” He grew angry, wondering if he would lose his temper at the first customer who piped up with a complaint about how he was holding up the barista, holding up
their
morning.

“Then you’ll just have to text me. I’m really busy, Connor. Please.” Her happy face slid into place as she began to apologize to the clot of customers piling up behind Connor.

He snatched his coffee from the counter and walked out, jolting a few who didn’t get out of his way in time. He tried to clear his mind on the short walk back to his apartment, but it was futile. Rage at Ojacarcu, shame at his anger toward Dana, resentment with a touch of compassion for Jera, hate for Dracul, and the sense of betrayal from Petre and Vadim.

Connor sat in his recliner, sipping coffee, typing out message after message on the phone to Dana, always deleting them before pressing the
send
button. After an hour of repeating this routine, he left to pick up Jera. During the drive, he wondered how long this would go on, driving her everywhere, collecting her fee from clients.

The day before, he’d met at least ten men, all of them in their fifties or later except one. All of them looked like they weren’t from America or Canada, and the few that spoke definitely didn’t sound like they were from either country. The young one, a man barely older than Connor, was the exception. The
kid
was probably some hotshot programmer or trust fund baby, or maybe he’d been lucky playing with Daddy’s money on the stock market and had cashed in big. The kid had recognized Connor, and was given a short explanation that no, he was not Connor Dunsmore, and made the client repeat it.

Jera’s first outfit was a black mini-skirt with a white tank top, no bra, black stockings, and heels that looked impossible to walk in. Her eyes were painted as if she were an Egyptian goddess, and she wore a wig of black hair that was shoulder-length and cut flat, making her appearance authentic. He’d spent too much time wasting his thoughts on exactly what nationality or race she was.

He drove her out to the south end of Nampa, a subdivision off Dooley Lane that looked upscale, as upscale as Nampa ever got from what he had seen of the city in the four years he’d been in the area. He escorted her to the front door, trying to keep his eyes on the walkway instead of her backside and her legs. It was a good thing she walked slightly in front of him as he’d already been caught twice staring at her face. He’d never seen her made up like this, and he was upset with himself that he couldn’t stop thinking about how exotic, how beautiful she looked.

The man who answered the door was short but looked to be in shape, his iron-gray hair perfectly molded along his skull. He held the door open, closing it behind them after looking out as if his neighbors might be filming the odd activities going on at his house.

“You want to see the other one?” the man asked, handing Connor three hundreds.

“What other one?” Connor asked.

“She didn’t tell you?” the man asked, winking as he cupped his hand on Jera’s ass. “She and a friend will be working together. Come on, give her a look and tell me what you think.”

The client led them down a short hallway to a large bedroom. Another woman was already stripped down to a thong and stockings, nothing else. She made no move to cover herself as Connor stared at her. When she noticed Jera, Connor noted a small smile on the woman’s face as she stepped toward Jera and began to help her out of her skirt and tank top. Connor turned away, not wanting to see any of it.

“What’s the matter, son, you queer or something?” the client asked.

“No, I’ve just seen it enough already,” Connor replied, wanting to make the man eat a few of his teeth.

“Yeah, I bet. People dream of having your job, but then when you get it, and all you see is pussy all day long, it probably dulls the senses a bit, eh?”