Too Wylde (3 page)

Jimmy paused, looked down at the skinny as a
rail South African. "Thanks, Deon."

Deon toasted him with the cup. "It's what
friends do."

He didn't understand the look on Jimmy's
face. Or why his friend turned away and walked out without another
word.

It was almost sadness. Or fear, which would
be a first in Deon's experience with Jimmy.

More than anything else it looked like
self-loathing.

Dee Dee Kozak

It amused Dee Dee to keep Irina on a short
leash. It was a nice leash, a custom leather braided one originally
manufactured for show dogs. The collar was hand tooled black
leather studded with spikes. Very elegant.

The two women sat at a hotel room table.
Morning light came through the open shades. On the table was a pile
of neatly banded hundred dollar bills that added up to the tidy sum
of $900,000. It was all that remained of Irina's previous
occupation as a major arms dealer in the Lake City underworld. Dee
had walked Irina out through the epic gun fight that ended her
business; and all she had to show for her curtailed contract (she
was, after all, one of the best hitters in the business) was a new
sub-bitch and a big bag of money.

After all else was considered, she'd come out
ahead in a way she hadn't anticipated. The fighter's gift was
improvisation in the fight, and she hadn't risen to her standing in
the, well, cut-throat business she was in without the tested
ability to improvise and develop the fight to her advantage.

A nice advantage.

"You promised me that you would take care of
them," Irina said.

"That was then, this is now," Dee Dee said.
"That was before you walked me into a combat zone, and before I
took your helpless ass out. You pissed off some dangerous men.
They'd probably have cut you into small pieces if I hadn't taken
you out of there. You think, sweetheart? I mean, at all? With
anything besides your over rated pussy?"

"Don't talk to me like that."

Dee Dee smiled her sunny California girl
smile, tugged the leash, hard, snapped Irina's head almost into the
table. "You don't get to tell me how to talk, Rina."

Hatred blazed from the Russian woman's
eyes.

"You know you love it," Dee Dee said.

Irina looked away. "Like I said."

Dee tapped the stack of cash. "There's this,
Rina. Walking away money. I can give you a little piece, drop you
at the airport, you want. See how far you can get. Hard for a girl
to start over at your age. Don't think you'd get much traction here
in lil old Lake City. There's no upside to tackling these boys.
Especially just to make you happy, which is not my concern. If you
can come up with one good reason why we shouldn't take our money
and go our ways instead of tackling some heavy hitters head on,
I'll certainly listen." She paused. "Well?"

Irina took a deep breath and calmed herself.
"You want money?"

"I'm all about the money, honey. But I'm not
greedy, and I got a lot of money here."

"That's my money."

Dee laughed, a tinkling sound. " You want to
take it from me, go ahead." She tugged the leash. "I'll give you a
shot."

"It's not fair."

Dee laughed hard, a deep genuine belly laugh.
"Dang, girl! 'It's not fair.' Nothing in life is. 'It's not fair?'
What the fuck?"

She shook back her damp hair, cut short in an
expensive Malibu salon. "So? I'm waiting..."

"If you want money, there's more."

"Now you have my attention. Who has the
money, how much, and where is it?"

"I have more. In accounts. Off shore. And
there is more money at the old warehouse."

"How much at the warehouse?"

"Maybe three hundred thousand."

"Not worth my ass to walk in there. What
about the offshore accounts? You have access? Passwords and
numbers? That's a no-brainer, and we don't need to tangle with my
South African boy friend and his full-auto buddies."

"Yes. I have access."

"Well, just go your way and get your money.
I'll drop you where you want to go and I'll keep what I got right
there. You can go be someone else's bitch. You're not my type."

"I will pay you to finish the job."

Dee Dee sighed. "Honey, listen to me. I've
been doing this work a lot longer than you might think. Sometimes
it's just not worth it, no matter how much money you throw at the
problem. Sometimes it's just best to walk away and call it lesson
learned. You got enough money for you to go somewhere and recover
your senses. That's
your
problem. You don't
have enough for me to run back into the middle of that hornet's
nest and try to swat those troublesome boys. I doubt they're gonna
track you down; no offense, but you're no threat to anyone, though
your money might be. Those boys are straight up shoot and loot
bandits; I doubt they're gonna go all financial forensics on your
international bank dealings."

"I will pay you one million in cash."

"Baby, I got $900K on the table to walk
away."

"I will pay you an additional one million. In
cash."

"For what?"

"To kill the South African. And his
friend."

Dee leaned forward. "Rina, baby, I could just
kill
you
and walk away. Or work you in a
way you might find pleasant at first, but will get old in a hurry.
Till I get that info out of you. Take some advice from a girl
friend. Walk the fuck away. Be smart."

"Two million."

Dee leaned back. "You have that?"

"Yes."

"Well, then," Dee said. "A girl could buy a
lot of shoes with two million. But you're going to have to show me
the money first."

"You will kill me."

"Maybe, baby. But what choice do you have? I
could summon up some professional indignation at the loose ends.
For two million."

"I need a secure computer."

"No such thing, baby. But I can get you onto
one a little more secure than your average run of the mill laptop.
Let me call a friend of a friend..."

Mr. Smith

Mr. Smith drove his Jeep Cherokee around the
chain of lakes that defined the center of Lake City, humming his
favorite mindless driving tune:

"It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a
beautiful day in the neighborhood, won't you be mine, won't you be
mine..."

He had on a snappy fedora, all 40's detective
style, pulled down low over his face, and his eyes covered with
expensive prescription Oakleys. The collar of his leather jacket
was turned up to obscure the white blur of scar that defined his
face. He popped a pill, a steroid/pain killer mix custom crafted by
a chemist of his acquaintance, rinsed it down with a sip from the
bottle of water with the long curly straw.

He liked those straws; reminded him of his
youth.

Lake City in the morning light: joggers in
expensive spandex legging it around the trails, bikers and bladers
in their own lane; morning commute traffic into the heart of
downtown; early summer time in the Midwest, trees budding,
brilliant sunlight gleaming off the blue crystal waters and the
windows of the skyscrapers; all in all a lovely example of the
quintessential American Midwest city.

Bullshit.

He'd been here once before, when he still had
a face, and he knew what was just under the surface here. This
gleaming little city was one of the top sources for prime
Midwestern pussy that got picked up and sold in the Middle East --
any age, any sex, these little blond Norhoogian and Swedeanhovians
fetched a pretty penny, especially before they got too fucked up,
so to speak. This was a primary transit point in the manufacture of
methamphetamine in industrial quantities, since down south was
prime agricultural country and provided ample access to the
necessary precursor chemicals. Money laundering was big business as
well, this being one of the prime financial centers in the country.
And of course you had the whole middle-eastern terror connection,
since Lake City was home to the largest concentration of Somalis
outside of Mog, as well as to a number of mosques with direct
connection to Hamas and Hizbollah and a host of others, not least
among them The Base, or Al Qaeda, as the civilians called it. Big
time organized crime, especially in the thriving bar and club
circuit, where the mob had a finger in the cash flow going back to
the Prohibition Days when speakeasies were a prime revenue source
because of all the hard-drinking Swedes and Norwegians imported as
cheap labor in the mines and mills and foundries of Lake City.

Nowadays, more money was made in the
high-tech offices downtown, or in the converted warehouses, or in
the ring suburbs, but there would always be a thriving dark side
business in this town. Too much momentum over the years, and even
the rich techno-yuppies needed a place to spend their money on a
little taste of the naughty and not-nice.

He followed the main drag, what was the name
of it? Couldn't remember, didn't matter. His memory was going to
shit along with the rest of him, his body kept functioning by a
careful brew of chemicals and occasional treatments since the burn
damage that should have killed him wreaked havoc on his body's
internal workings as well. He remembered the way down to E Street,
and then carefully, clocking the street, drove down and passed Moby
Dick's, the most fucked up bar in town, maybe in the whole
universe, place of employment of one Jimmy Wylde, known to his
old-timey time friends as Jimmy John.

He drove by, staring straight ahead.

"Hello, Johnny, how you been, Johnny, it's so
good to see you back once again..." he sang softly.

He drove downtown, clocking the flow of the
streets at rush hour, how the downtown streets looped like a bowl
of spaghetti, all one-ways that followed the old cart tracks where
the 1800-era peddlers had dragged their carts up from the river
banks. He drove out into the suburbs again and stopped at an Ace
Hardware. Went in.

The older man behind the counter looked him
right in the face. "Help you, sir?"

No flinch. That was interesting.

"My face don't bother you?" Mr. Smith
said.

"You service?" the older man said.

Mr. Smith nodded. The old man held out his
hand and said, "Thank you and God bless you for your service and
your sacrifice."

Mr. Smith turned and walked out.

"Sir? I'm sorry...sir?"

He walked down the street, got into his car,
pulled away. He saw the old man standing on the walk, watching him
drive away. Mr. Smith studied his face in the mirror. His eyes were
glazed with yellow, cracking red at the corners. He pulled over,
took out some eye drops, squirted them into his eyes till the
liquid ran down his cheeks.

Jimmy John Wylde and Lizzy Caprica

Jimmy bent Lizzy over the bed, gripped her
hips with both hands, driving and driving hard and brutal into her,
each thrust punctuated with her gasp. Her hands bunched the sheets,
and she writhed back against him.

"Harder," she said. "Fuck me harder."

Jimmy did. He dug his fingers into the muscle
of her rounded hips, slammed his pelvis against her sweaty ass,
each thrust rewarded with another cry from her that made him harder
and harder...he felt his coming rise up in him, his balls squeezed
tight up against the base of his penis, and just as he started to
shoot in her, he reached around and grabbed one breast, pulled her
back against him and bit her, hard, on the shoulder just as she
cried out....

...he reached around and cupped her cunt,
pulled her tight against him so she couldn't slip out.

Till his legs trembled and shook.

Later, in the bed, sheets crumpled and wet,
her curled against his chest. Heart rate subsiding, breath slowing.
She rubbed her shoulder.

"Did you leave a mark?" she said.

He looked. "I didn't break the skin."

She pressed up against him, reached down and
stroked him till he started to harden.

"You can break the skin," she said.

***

Later, after, she came from the bathroom with
a warm washrag, wiped his throbbing penis and scrotum clean. Took
the washcloth back into the bathroom, then returned and slipped
beneath the sheets.

The companionable silence between them they
both cherished.

"I like it when you need me," she said.

"I know."

"Are you better?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

She laid her head down on his shoulder,
draped an arm and leg across him. Slipped into sleep while Jimmy
stared at the ceiling, the early morning light dappled and falling,
a mountainside in Afghanistan in his mind's eye...

...flames, behind him the heat, so hot his
skin was wrinkling, was he on fire? He couldn't tell, the brap brap
of automatic bursts somewhere near him, head ringing, crawling,
pulling with both arms, pushing with the one that still worked,
where was his carbine? Pulled his pistol, rolled behind a rock and
saw one of the Muj poke a barrel out, rested the Glock 19 on the
rock pulled the trigger bap bap bap...

...screams of the wounded, the burning...

...Jimmy! Help me, Jimmy, fuck, I'm on fire,
Jimmy....

***

Sitting up in the bed. Across the room,
sitting in a chair, sipping coffee, silently watching him, Lizzy,
her red hair wound up in a towel, an old flannel shirt wrapped
around her.

"You told me once to never touch you when you
dream," she said.

Jimmy's heart, pounding. Sweat on his brow, a
cold steel taste in his dry mouth.

She unwound from the chair, all yogini-dancer
grace, went into the bathroom, returned with a glass of water she
handed him. He drank it down. She took it, refilled it, handed it
to him.

More slowly this time, he drank it down. Got
up and pissed for a long time, the tinkling of his water in the
toilet a reminder of where he was.