Enforcer (4 page)

“Don’t kill him, of course,” their boss said. “Not this time anyway.”

Connor wasn’t sure if the man was joking or planning. When Connor had agreed to work on the side for Costache Ojacarcu, he’d been adamant about not being part of anything that involved murder or any other capital crime. Connor appreciated the extra money, and his boss paid well for the work, but he wanted to keep playing hockey as long as his body would let him, even if he ended up two or three more leagues below the UPHL. He had no desire to spend any time in prison, nor did he want to end up back in Canada with a felony deportation.

“This time,” their boss said, “warn him a little, and don’t let him weasel out of paying extra. The little shit has money. He’s making enough from cutting the hell out of what we give him. If he says he doesn’t have it, hit him a few more times.”

“What if he doesn’t have any more money?” Connor asked.

Ojacarcu looked at him without blinking, “Then I guess you will hit him until money starts coming out of him.”

*****

“The boss, he is funny sometimes,” Petre said as they drove west toward Caldwell. “‘Hit him until he turns into money.’”

“Your terrible English is giving me a headache,” Connor said, adjusting a heating vent.

“You know what I mean,” the Romanian said.

“How was whats-her-name?” Connor asked.

“The girl? Diana. She fucked for pleasure,” Petre said. Connor could see the huge smile on his face from the dashboard lights. “We should go out more often. You find the best girls.”

“If I didn’t play hockey, I’d be hanging out with you instead, using you to pick up girls.”

“You think I would attract girls for us?” Petre asked, turning the possibility over in his mind that he would be the one women fell over their own feet trying to say hello to.

“Some really ugly, hairy, Romanian skags I’m sure,” Connor answered.

Petre grunted Romanian curses at him.

“We’d still sex them though. I’ve never done it with a hairy Romanian chick,” Conner baited.

“Romanian girls, some are nice,” Petre told him. “Some are like Russian tanks. Some are crazy and try to cut you with knives.”

“They’re all crazy,” Connor said, leaning his head back as they passed the first Nampa exit off the freeway.

“Da, but these Romanian girls. Only Hungarian girls are crazier. Hungarian girls cut off your parts. Romanian girls just cut you.” When Connor looked over at him, Petre added, “A lot.”

“Do you know this guy? Larry?” Connor asked his partner after a few minutes.

“Da, I’ve met him a few couple of times,” Petre said, and Connor decided to not correct him this time. “Skinny and he sweats. Cățel mic și împuțit.
Stinky little dog
is what David always called him. Tattoos, metal shit in his face and ears, talks like tough guy. You hit him once, I bet he cries for his mommy.”

“Is he crazy? A doper? Does he have guns?” Connor pressed.

Talking
to most of Mr. Ojacarcu’s clients meant people who had somehow ended up caught in the Romanian’s web. Businessmen, college girls needing extra money, once in a while a politician or police officer. There were plenty of shadier types, which were the majority of Ojacarcu’s clientele. His boss had kept him from the drug dealers, the thugs who robbed drug dealers, the dealers and gangbangers who robbed junkies, and the junkies who would rape, murder, and steal, just to get their next high.

“He is stupid,” Petre said with disgust. “He stinks, he sweats, he talks shit, he beats up girls instead of men, and he’s a junkie dealer.”

“What kind of dope? And does he have guns or not?”

“Sometimes powder,” Petre said, indicating cocaine. “Mostly glass.”

“Great,” Connor breathed. He hated meth heads.

One of the girls he’d slept with two years before had been shacked up with a loser who was strung out on the stuff. The guy beat her a couple of times until Connor had pounded his face in behind a dumpster at the grocery store in a chance encounter. The idiot then showed up to the arena during a team practice thinking he was going to carve Connor up with a sword.

“A fucking sword!” Ojacarcu had exclaimed in anger to Connor later. “Like he thinks he is Conan!”

Dracul and another suit caught the junkie as he tried to get down to the ice. Ojacarcu had hinted that the junkie wouldn’t be showing up to anywhere, and Connor had never asked for clarification.

“Don’t worry,” Petre said, pulling his coat back enough to reveal an automatic in a shoulder holster.

“Great,” Connor said again, a sinking feeling settling in his stomach.

CHAPTER 4

Petre stopped the Lincoln in front of a run-down house on N. 2nd Avenue. He shut the car off and checked his weapon. Connor had grown up with hunting rifles on the Saskatchewan plains, but had never handled a pistol. They made him more nervous than he would admit. However, he was glad Petre had it, as meth heads were unpredictable.

Both men strode up the broken walkway as if they had every right to be there. Petre pounded his fist on the door five times in a “cop knock” to let Larry know they were there. Just as Petre was about to bang on the door again, it flew open. The man who opened the door looked straight out of a drug abuse prevention commercial.

Larry Fallon was a few inches shorter than Connor, who topped out right at six feet. Larry’s clothes were baggy, hung from his emaciated limbs, and looked like they hadn’t seen a washing machine in weeks. The wave of stink that rolled out of the doorway and hit Connor in the face made him gag momentarily until he breathed through his mouth.

“Who the fuck are you?” Larry asked, his eyes shifting back and forth from Petre to Connor. He squinted at Petre for a few seconds. “I know you. What the fuck do you want? Where’s David?”

Connor and Petre were silent as the junkie came out on the porch and nervously looked up and down the quiet street, as if cops were waiting behind every bush. Larry smiled at them. The few teeth he had left were beginning to turn from brown to black, with only a few yellow spots left. Connor had met a lot of hockey players, but Larry would win the prize for worst teeth by a long shot. Connor decided that having a team dentist wasn’t in the budget for drug addicts and dealers.

“Mr. Ojacarcu sent us,” Petre said in his deep voice. “Let us go inside and do business.”

“Fuck you, man, I don’t know you.” Larry started backing into the house, trying to get the door closed.

“I will ask once,” Petre said, his foot blocking the door from closing.

“Fuck you, man!” the junkie hissed.

“Listen, friend,” Connor said in a friendly tone, “let us in, or my partner here is going to ventilate you.”

“Who the fuck is it?” a woman’s voice called from somewhere in the house. The sound was more of a screech than anything.

“Shut up,” Larry said, turning his head back toward whoever said it. He looked back at the two men crowding his doorway before he finally let go of the door and backed all the way into the house.

Connor and his partner entered the house, another wave of rank odor assaulting their noses. He wanted to leave the door open to air the place out, but shut it anyway, knowing there might be a little too much noise coming from the house soon. Larry backed all the way into the living room and sat down hard on the couch.

“What the fuck do you want?” he asked the two men in his living room.

“Politeness will get you more honey,” Petre said, butchering the phrase.

“What my big, angry friend here means,” Connor said, slapping Petre on the shoulder, “is that you should shut up and listen. And when we ask you a question, tell us the answer.”

“Or what?” the junkie asked, looking nervous.

“Yeah, or what?” the woman asked, coming into the living room from the hallway.

Connor stared at her. He couldn’t tell if her skin was naturally dark, or if the light in the house was just that dim. She wore a thin, fake satin nightgown that split in the front and had a fake satin belt to tie it with. He thought at first her eyes were made up to be dark around the edges until he realized they were bruises. A leather collar surrounded her throat with a ring at the front, the kind a dog would wear while hooked to a chain or leash.

“What the fuck you staring at, faggot?” she asked him in her screechy voice. “Ain’t never seen tits before?”

She opened her nightgown, letting all three men see her nakedness underneath. Connor recoiled at the bruises that covered her body. Her arms, legs, and her stomach were a tie-dye of dark purples and sickly greens. He tried to imagine what she looked like without all of the bruises, wondering at the same time when she’d last taken a shower. Her short black hair looked greasy, dirty, and tangled.

“Close your shit up, you stupid whore,” Larry yelled at her from the couch.

The woman leered at Connor for a few more seconds before wrapping the nightgown around her and tying the belt to keep it closed. She sat down next to Larry, put her arms around him, and continued to give Connor an angry glare.

“You want a ride, man?” the junkie asked Connor. “Fifty bucks and she’s yours for half an hour.”

Petre cleared his throat. “Mr. Fallon, Mr. Ojacarcu has relieved David of his duties. We are your new
assistants
. You will see us once per week, and you will pay us the amount you owe Mr. Ojacarcu plus ten percent of your debt, including interest. If you do not pay us, you will find it hard to continue to earn a living. There is to be no argument,” he said, holding up a hand when it looked like Larry was going to launch into protest. “You will pay us. Or else.”

“What the fuck?” the sweaty little man protested from the couch. “I don’t have thirteen thousand dollars right now. I got shit out on the street, man. You gotta wait to get paid just like I do.”

Petre didn’t say anything as he stepped forward and locked his fingers in Larry’s hair. The Romanian pulled hard enough for Larry to leave the couch in flight before a crashing landing in the middle of the dirty floor. He looked up and watched Petre open his fist, a thick chunk of hair falling to the floor. The junkie blinked, put his hand to the top of his head, and yelled in pain when it came away bloody.

The woman jumped off the couch, shrieking at full volume as she went straight at Petre. Connor stepped in front of her, shoving her back to the couch with more force than he intended. She rebounded from the cushion and rocketed back off the couch and onto the floor.

“Fuck you! Fuck you! You fucking piece of shit! How dare you come in here like you own the place! Get the fuck out of here! I’ll cut your fucking cock off and stuff it in your mouth!” She spewed a torrent of insults and curses in her screeching voice until Connor crouched down and slapped her across the face.

“I don’t want to hit you again,” Connor told her. “Keep your mouth shut, let us finish our business, and you can get back to whatever it is you do in this shithole.”

When she opened her mouth to say something, Connor reared back his open palm again.

“Fuck you,” she cursed under her breath.

Connor turned to the shouting junkie, still on the floor, still searching his head for missing hair. Connor grabbed another handful of the man’s hair and stood him up, lifting Larry to his feet with another scream. Connor drove his fist into the junkie’s nose hard enough to make it bleed, then again into his mouth. Larry finally stopped yelling and began to cry.

“You will take my friend to wherever you hide money, and you will give him thirteen thousand dollars. If you do not, this will be a long night for you,” Petre said in a tone that promised much more pain.

Larry spat blood at him. “Fuck you.”

Connor punched the man in the face three more times, dazing him and causing him to sway. Larry was having a hard time staying on his feet, his balance worthless, both of his hands locked onto Connor’s wrist. He opened his mouth to say something, and instead ate another fist, then three more.

“I’m done fucking around with you, junkie,” Connor told him. “Pay us what you owe Mr. Ojacarcu or we are going to do this all night.”

“Aw ribe,” Larry said through broken teeth and swollen lips. “Leb be go.”

“No,” Connor said, “We are going to walk wherever you point me to, wherever the money is. I’ll let you go when I have the amount you owe in my hand.”

Larry glowered at him, eyes full of hate and fear. He pulled one hand away from Connor’s wrist and pointed down the hallway. Connor looked down at the woman on the floor.

“Watch her,” Connor told Petre as he half-shoved, half-dragged Larry down the hall by the hair.

The rank odor got stronger as the two moved toward the bedroom at the end of the hallway. Garbage and dirty clothes were strewn everywhere, making Connor step carefully as he walked. He didn’t want to trip and let the junkie get away, unsure if the man had a gun or a knife hidden within the endless refuse.

“Here,” Larry said as they came to the closed bedroom door.

“Open it,” Connor demanded.

“I can’t with you holding my hair,” Larry said, barely understandable.

“It’s in here?” Connor asked, making sure.