The Woman They Kept (2 page)

“
We don't do much
business," the bartender said, his eyes never leaving Gideon.
"What can I get for you?”

“
A whiskey, please.”
The contents of the bar were innocuous. There were pictures up on
the wall of people that Gideon didn't recognize with signatures
scratched across them, vintage signs for types of beer that Gideon
had never tried, and old pieces of farming equipment that proudly
showed rust from age. He leaned across the bar and lowered his
voice. “I didn't really come here for a drink.”

The bartender smiled, revealing
an impressive collection of sharp and brilliantly white teeth.
Gideon had the disturbing sensation of staring at a wild animal,
though nothing of the rest of the bartender's demeanor would hint at
that. The rest of him was as innocuous as the bar itself, mid-sized
shoulders, plain clothes, shaven face, but those teeth set Gideon on
edge. They were wild teeth, animal teeth. Teeth that were built
for piercing and tearing flesh. “Not many do. Are you in
town for the fight?”

Gideon sipped at the whiskey
placed in front of him and his heart skipped a beat. The
bartender's eyes betrayed no hint of emotion. Gideon kept his
breathing steady and measured. “What do you mean? I live
right on the other side of the rail.”

Those teeth flashed again. “No
you don't. Your shoes are half melted away. You a rider? We don't
affiliate or discriminate against any clan, you should know that.”

Gideon wished desperately that
his gun was still strapped to his waist. There was nothing on the
walls that he could use as a weapon if it came down to it, he would
have to rely on his fists. “I ride, but I'm not a rider.”
He pulled up his sleeves and showed two bare forearms to the
bartender. “No mark.”

“
There sure isn't a mark,
but something's deviling you. You look at things out of the corners
of your eyes,” That toothy grin came back again. “Like
I do. You're welcome here so long as you don't cause trouble.
You're not a rider, and you're not a peace officer.” He
leaned back and pressed at something below the bar. An audible
click came from behind Gideon. “Men's room is open,”
the bartender said, nodding his head towards the door.

Gideon hesitated half way to the
bathroom. “How did you know I'm not a peace officer?”

The bartender tongued his
canines in a feral way. “An officer wouldn't have been
looking around the room for something to kill me with.”

...

The men's bathroom was a white
tiled room that had a noticeable lack of the smell of shit or piss
or disinfectant. It smelled like just any other room, and had just
as much dust everywhere as the bar outside. Everywhere except for a
trail along the ground leading to a full length mirror that now
swung wide open, revealing a passageway behind it. There was a
stone set of winding stairs behind the mirror. Gideon swallowed
hard before stepping down onto the first step.

“
It's not a grave,”
he told himself quietly.

As the staircase wound down the
sounds of music and shouting grew louder and the smell of sweat and
sawdust floated up towards him. A strobe of flickering neon lights
danced up the stairs as he got to the bottom, and soon Gideon
stepped into a crowded throng of people cheering.

At the center of the room an
elevated platform had a silver cage around it and the sounds of a
struggle were accompanied by the cheers of the crowd. A man stood
on one side of the cage, bare chested and bloodied, with his hands
tightly gripped into fists. Gideon raised his eyebrows and stood on
his toes to see what the man was fighting. Hunched down in a
fighting stance, the fur along its back raised, teeth bared, was the
largest wolf Gideon had ever seen. It too had blood flecked around
its body. The fighter and the wolf stalked each other around the
cage, each scoring hits with fists or teeth. The wolf growled and
spit dripped from its maw onto the mat they were fighting on.

There were couches to one side
of the cage and Gideon slid over onto an empty one, getting a better
view of the crowd around him. Some were standing, some were sitting
on couches or chairs like himself, most were well dressed in suits
and dresses with ties loosened and jackets thrown over chairs. In
and around the area of the couches there were several young women
wearing only bras and panties. Those who weren't serving were
sitting on the laps of the people on the couches. A bald old man on
the couch across from Gideon was sucking on the exposed breast of a
woman who couldn't have been more than eighteen, his wrinkled hand
pulling aside her panties as she sat on his lap. Her face had the
blank and passive look of either drugs or boredom. There were many
more women around Gideon with this exact same look on their face.

A woman with angled features
drawn onto her face sat down beside Gideon. She too wore only a bra
and panties, her face covered thickly with make up, eyebrows drawn
in where they had been plucked out. Her lips were painted garishly
red and glistened in the low light of the basement. “Can I
get you a drink?” she asked. Gideon nodded, he had left the
whiskey upstairs. “Do you want to buy me one too?”

Gideon cocked an eyebrow and the
woman pointed to the old man next to them. There were two abandoned
drinks next to them, still full. He now had his finger up to his
wedding ring inside of the woman on his lap.

“
Sure,” Gideon said
and he took out his wallet, handing her a bill. She ignored it and
reached for a larger one before bouncing off. In a moment she was
back with two iced drinks and she handed him one. It tasted sweet
and strong, some sort of alcoholic tea. A feeling of warmth spread
through Gideon as he sipped it. The woman waited for Gideon to set
down his drink and then sat down on his lap, grinding herself into
the fork in his pants. He lifted her gently and set her beside him
on the armrest instead. “What's your name?” he asked.

“
What would you like it to
be?” She tried to slide down onto his lap again and he smiled
at her before placing her back on the armrest. She pouted and
pulled one of his hands to the inside of her thighs. Gideon pulled
his hand away and took out a photograph.

“
Have you seen this
woman?” he asked. The photograph was worn at the edges and
folded in half, showing a blonde haired girl laughing with her arms
around someone that was out of the picture. Her face was full, her
cheekbones high, her smile large and her teeth slightly crooked but
white.

The girl on the armrest studied
the photograph with one hand while trying to rub her other against
the fork in Gideon's pants. “She looks too expensive to work
here. Try the Bloom house, he caters to a more expensive clientele.
There's a problem with the expensive ones, though,” she said.

“
What's that?”

She turned her head downwards
and stared at him with big, watery eyes, pushing her breasts
together with her forearms and leaning close to him. “They
won't let you do the things to them that I would. Would you like to
come inside me? It'd only be twenty more, you wouldn't even have to
wear a rubber.”

Gideon pushed her away and
stood, eager to be away from the small but persistent woman. He
began to walk toward the stairway when something grabbed him, he
looked back and the woman was holding his hand. “Please,”
she said, her eyes quivering with what might have been fear. “I
can't get a drink and not bring anything back to the house. They'll
make it bad for me. Let me do something for you, anything.”

From the cage Gideon saw the
final seconds of the fight as the man swung a hard right into the
wolf's jaw with one hand and following with a karate chop to the
throat. A high pup-like whelp went out from the wolf and it
collapsed to the ground. The fighter raised a foot high to finish
it off and Gideon turned back to the girl. She looked young, and
frightened, a shiver running down her arms. He pulled out another
few notes and gave them to her.

...

It was still early enough in the
night to get out to the Bloom house, so Gideon took the rail again.
As he watched the city once again pass under him he wondered how
many places in Kitswitch were involved in this. Hopefully not more
than two.

The houses grew larger as he
neared his destination. By the time the rail stopped he was in a
section of the city where every house had a wrought iron fence
around it, sometimes taking up the entire city block. He walked
until he got to the Bloom house, daunted by the impressive amount of
security cameras mounted around the place. There was one right on
the front gate with a button under it that said, 'Push to talk.'
Gideon pressed it.

“
I've been directed here
for a bit of business,” he said into the box near the button.
There was no reply, but there was a buzz and a snap of the gate
opening. He entered the complex and the gate shut behind him, a
sudden hum coming from it that dimmed the lights from the path.

He walked the stone path that
cut through the grass. The house was Gothic, the roof peaking
sharply into the air and peppered with stone gargoyles glaring down,
the windows arching high, giving the place a very foreboding
feeling. If Gideon were a child he would think that the house was
haunted.

A short man met him on the steps
of the house, he wore a set of gold spectacles that he pulled off
and polished as Gideon approached. His hair was combed back in a
pronounced widows peak almost as sharp as the spires coming out of
the roof. He did not smile as Gideon approached.

“
Hello, my name is
Bertrand. You have come to see our wares?” he asked
cordially, bowing slightly as he spoke.

Gideon nodded and Bertrand
opened the door for him. The doorway opened up to a cavernous hall,
their footsteps echoed loudly as they walked. There were couches
around for sitting and the corners of the room all had statues of
various Abrahamic figures, cherubs and demons, carved in great
detail. There was a second floor that twin staircases ascended to,
but Bertrand took Gideon to a side door instead, holding it open for
Gideon. It led to a small room with a pair of golden doors on one
wall. Bertrand pulled out a key from his pocket and fit it into a
keyhole next to the doors and the sound of an elevator approached.
When it opened Gideon hesitated for a moment.

"You guys are pretty lax on
security here, aren't you?" Gideon said before stepping into
the elevator.

"Are we?" Bertrand
said with a smile as he joined him. On the inside of the elevator
there were no buttons, just a pad that Bertrand placed his thumb
against. "I think you'll find that we are more than well
equipped for our purposes."

Gideon had no clue as to how far
underground they were going, though they seemed to be traveling
quickly. “Are you Bloom?” Gideon asked as the elevator
descended.

“
No sir. There is no
Bloom. I am simply a middle man for someone who would rather not
put his face forward. It is safer this way.”

“
For him anyway,”
Gideon said. Bertrand simply smiled at him.

The elevator doors opened to a
room equally as cavernous as the great hall, but instead of the
floor the majority of the ground had been gutted out and filled with
water, creating a pool that looked like an underground lake. There
was a walkway all around the outside and the water looked clean and
cool. Bertrand pressed a few buttons at the control panel.

“
It should just be one
moment, sir.”

All around the wall panels
illuminated with the sudden glow of red neon, each seeming to have
its own light source.

“
Feel free to inspect the
wares, sir,” Bertrand said and he stood with his hands folded
at his waist.

Gideon took a slow walk around
the perimeter. Each glass panel was actually a window to a small
room with a bed in the back, and standing right in front of each
window was a girl, the youngest he saw he guessed was around
eighteen, the oldest maybe twenty-five. They were dressed
minimally, there were all colors of skin and hair beckoning to him
as he walked past the windows. “Where do they come from?”
he asked.

“
Beg pardon, sir, but it
is considered impolite to ask. Suffice it to say that they did not
come from Kitswitch. They are well fed and cared for here, and each
is well trained. All have been checked medically. If you like, the
woman there has never been used, she is our prized asset. A virgin,
sir,” Bertrand said, pointing to the youngest girl Gideon
passed. Her face was round with baby fat and her hips were only
starting to curve.

“
How much do you charge
for a night?”

Bertrand made a small tisking
sound. “The man I represent is not a pimp, he does not whore
women out. He sells them, we do not take them back when you are
done. What you do with them is your own business.”

Gideon suppressed a lump that
was forming in his throat. The girl, the virgin whose window Gideon
was standing in front of, tried to dance for him, awkwardly shaking
her hips from side to side in a crude imitation of the other women.
She licked at her lips and Gideon turned away and pulled out a
photograph. “I am looking for a particular woman, it doesn't
look like you have her here. Do you recognize her?”