Money Shot

32.

Ridgeway was dead for nearly a full minute before the action next door reached a noisy crescendo. I pulled my gaze away from where he lay, cuffed and slumped over, his face purple above the electrical tape. I squeezed back into the vinyl dress and got the hell out of there.

When I left the champagne room, Ridgeway’s two thugs were back on the rail. They didn’t look away from the stripper they were watching. Nobody noticed me as I slipped out through a side door.

I dumped the red wig in a bucket that had been designated for cigarettes but was rarely used, judging from the number of butts on the surrounding ground. The cool night air felt good on my sweaty scalp.

From where I stood, I could see through the chain link fence to the warehouse next door. There was a van parked in the warehouse lot. The windows were tinted but it didn’t take much to picture the girls inside. The outgoing girls. The ones Ridgeway had used up and planned to dump like unwanted puppies that had outgrown their cuteness.

I thought again of Lia. Of everything she had gone through to stop what happened to her from happening to her little sister. That little sister, Ana, was probably in that building next door right now, waiting to be purchased like livestock. If Ridgeway no-showed, the men who’d smuggled Ana and the five other girls into the country would have no trouble finding another buyer.

This was not my problem. I was done. I’d had my revenge and Malloy was wrong. It wasn’t empty. It was strange and scary but still sweet, just like I’d wanted it to be. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life now and frankly, I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. I’d won. No one had believed I could do it, not even me, but I had. I’d beat that bastard and made him pay for what he did to me. I was free. I had one hundred eighty thousand dollars in the trunk of Vukasin’s car. So why couldn’t I stop thinking about Lia?

Am I sorry about the choice I made? Do I ever wonder what my life would have been like if I had taken the money and fucked off to wherever? Sometimes, sure. I mean, I think about it. I’ve got to do something to pass the time.

But I couldn’t just fuck off and leave them. I guess that makes me a softie or a sucker but I just couldn’t let it go, any more than I could have let Ridgeway live. I walked over to Vukasin’s car and got the duffel bag out of the trunk.

The warehouse next door apparently housed an operation that imported tropical fish from all over the world. Walking in through the open door, I was hit with this strange and powerful smell. Brine and fish and bleach. There was a guy with a machine gun waiting to greet me inside. A dour, bloodless shark in a good suit.

“Mr. Ridgeway sent me,” I said, offering up the duffel bag like a sacrifice.

The door guard unzipped the bag for a quick look at the contents. Then he nodded and reached out to undo the trench coat, rough hands sliding over the sides of my body. It took a minute to register the fact that he didn’t want a date, he was just frisking me. He quickly found and pocketed Vukasin’s gun.

“Go ahead,” he said with a heavy accent. It sounded like Lia’s.

I had no idea where I was supposed to go, but didn’t want to ask for directions. Strolling along the shadowed rows of small water-filled Plexiglas cubes, I noticed that each cube held a single sad and gorgeous aquatic prisoner. They watched me, silent and goggle-eyed as I passed. I think even they knew I had no idea what I was doing. I made my way toward the only furnished area in the enormous warehouse space, a cluster of cheap folding chairs and a card table that held a coffee carafe and some plastic spoons.

Past the table was a doorway leading into some kind of carpeted office. There was a light inside. I couldn’t think of what else to do, so I went in.

Inside the office were six girls and a man. The girls sat on a long couch, huddled together like nervous rabbits. They wore cheap dresses and looked dirty, with unwashed hair and sticky, sleepless eyes. The man was standing. He was older, tall, bald and stone cold. I could see war atrocities in his flat gray eyes. He seemed to be human shaped, with two arms and two legs and all the standard equipment, but there was nothing human about him at all. I got the feeling that this guy would watch a girl strip or watch her die with the same expression. There would be no manipulating this man with feminine wiles. My only chance here was to give him the money and hope for a fair deal.

I handed over the duffel. The man counted the money faster than a casino machine and gave a curt nod.

“Keys,” he said, putting out his hand.

I froze. What keys? Was I supposed to have keys? I groped desperately through my brain for the answer that would keep me alive. Then I thought of the van. The van full of outgoing girls. That was the trade, right? One hundred and eighty thousand dollars plus six used girls for the six fresh ones. He clearly wanted the keys to that van. I didn’t have them.

The gig was up. There was nothing I could do to trick this guy. No lie I could cobble together that would explain why I didn’t have the keys to the van. I just shook my head, looked at the floor and waited to die.

Amazingly, I didn’t. Instead of shooting me in the face, the man simply nodded, grabbed one of the girls off the sofa by the arm and left.

For a long time, I just stood there, staring at the five remaining girls. I was baffled by this turn of events until I realized it was just a cold-blooded display of sexual economics. When the six used girls were removed from the equation, the man had simply subtracted a single new girl from the deal. One fresh girl was worth six used ones. Unbelievable. I really hoped the girl he took back hadn’t been Lia’s sister.

“Ana?” I said, scanning the girls’ thin and haggard faces for a family resemblance. “Ana Albu?”

A brunette in the middle said something I didn’t understand. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen and didn’t look anything like Lia.

“Ana?” I asked again, pointing to her barely developed chest.

She nodded. “Ana,” she said, pointing to herself.

I heard sirens. I still had no idea what the hell I was going to do.