The Hard Bounce

Chapter Eleven

“Sid’s Vids,” came the voice over the phone. The voice was unmistakably Sid’s. She sounded a bit fuzzy, but alive. Dead women answer no telephones.

I hung up the pay phone outside the bar and sighed with relief.

“What happened?” Junior asked. Dark saddlebags camped under his eyes, matching my own. We’d spent the night in the office, pacing and smoking like mobile forest fires, wondering on Sid’s fate and consequently our own.

“Sid lives,” I said.

Junior sagged noticeably without the weight of Sid’s possible demise riding him. “Thank Christ. Man, I would not want to go down for having killed a broad. Even if it was an accident.”

I agreed with him insomuch as Sid wasn’t the person we wanted to damage. She was strictly a cobblestone on our road to Snake. I tried not to let my evil imaginings linger too long on what kind of damage I would inflict once I got my hands on that chickenhawk piece of shit.

Bad things.

“We gotta look at the DVD,” Junior said suddenly.

I shook my head. “No. No way am I watching that shit.”

Junior chewed off a piece of his thumbnail and spit it to the floor. “If you got a better idea, lay it on the table and we’ll go with it.”

I didn’t have any better ideas. We didn’t want to tap Sid again. One look at us, and she would opt for the shoot-first, ask-questions-later scenario.

Junior continued. “Whether or not it’s our girl in the movie, there might be something there that could clue us to where the guy holes up.”

The idea wasn’t bad. I just had no urge to watch kiddie porn even if it gave us an address, business hours, and directions from my front door. “It might have been shot in a studio, Junior. It might be in somebody else’s apartment. Shit, after what we did to Sid, the guy’s probably halfway to Mexico himself.”

“And if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry fucking Christmas.”

“Give me a sec,” I said.

“We’ve been through this all night, bro. We’re at the end of our options here. I don’t wanna see what’s on that video either, but if it’s gonna help put twenty-five thousand rocks in my hand? If it could help us get the kid away from that freak?”

The bottle in my hand was almost half empty, and since prayer was never my strongest anchor, I took one last pull. “Let’s go.”

A fist-sized lump swelled in my throat as Junior slid the first DVD into my machine. The player closed silently and hummed. A few seconds of blackness, then slow focus from the dark.

A man sitting on a white cushioned chair, completely naked but for a snake tattoo coiling down his arm and a black leather mask covering his head. The S &M kind with the zipper over the mouth.

A soft knock sounds. The camera pans over to the door, the lens passing over the windows. Heavy black curtains cover the glass.

“Come in,” the masked man says.

I listened for anything familiar in the speech pattern. Snake’s voice was a low baritone with a slight touch of local accent. Quincy, maybe? Beyond that, nothing.

A girl walks in the door.

Not Cassie. This one’s around the same age, though. Too young. Way too fucking young.

She’s tiny, blonde, and scared. Wide ears poke out from under her hair, making her look like a frightened mouse. A low chewing sound.

For a moment, I was afraid the DVD player was starting to fritz. Then I realized the sound was coming from the teeth grinding inside my head. If we didn’t get this over with soon, I was going to need that twenty-five grand to buy myself a nice pair of dental crowns.

“Are you here for your lesson?” Snake says.

“Y-Yes,” the girl replies, badly acting her part. “I’ve been very bad.”

Snake stands up and walks over to the girl. He strokes her face with a disturbingly gentle tenderness. Then he balls his fingers tightly in her hair, yanks her head back, and flings her across the room onto the bed. The girl mewls in pain and fear as Snake backhands her. He kneels over the kid, straddling her chest, and tears her shirt open. The camera zooms in on her terrified face, as though her fear is the most important thing caught on the film.

I looked away, unable to watch anymore. The contents of my stomach had churned into rotting cottage cheese.

All I heard was one more heart-wrenching word. “No.”

Junior slowly rocked back and forth in his chair. His eyes never left the screen. “Shut it off,” he said in a monotone. “There’s nothing more to see on this one.” I guess Junior forgot he had the remote clutched in his hand.

I stood up to hit the stop button. My finger shook and missed it the first time. I closed my eyes and pressed the button carefully. If I missed a second time, I was going to shut it off with my fist. “I didn’t see anything. You?” My voice was as flat as his.

Junior shook his head. “Put another one in.”

“Junior, this guy’s careful. There were curtains up over the windows. He wore a mask. There’s nothing on the goddamn discs.”

“Put another one in. We don’t know there’s nothing on the other ones. We gotta look.”

I took a deep breath, and I switched the discs. They felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each. I hit the play button again. The second disc didn’t open with a cryptic attempt at a storyline.

The picture kicks right in to Snake, still masked, spanking a girl with a large paddle. She’s on all fours, freely offering her backside to Snake’s blows. The girl’s a bit older-maybe even legal. The action goes a little beyond typical S &M. She’s not just receiving a playful tapping on the ass. Thin lines of blood run from huge red welts on the back of her thighs. The girl moans orgasmically with every blow.

We watched until we were sure there was nothing on that DVD either.

We started the third. From the get-go, the feel of the video was different.

Snake stands on one side of the door, shuffling back and forth like a kid who has to pee. He seems excited, eager to begin the scene. Cassandra opens the door.

My throat closed.

She’s wearing the same clothes as when I first saw her at The Cellar. Her bright red hair sticks to her scalp, as though she’s been caught in the rain.

I’d been stuck in the same rain. “This was shot the same day,” I said.

“Same day as what?” Junior asked.

Snake pounces from behind the door. He smacks Cassandra hard enough to send her sprawling onto the curtains. The camera follows her. She screams.

Junior and I both leapt to our feet, reacting to the violence in real time.

“Motherfucker,” Junior muttered.

Snake grabs a fistful of hair. He says, “You’ve been a bad girl, Cassie.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she whimpers.

“You need to learn a lesson.” He cracks her another one, still gripping her hair. Cassandra’s head snaps around and she swoons, stunned from the blow. Snake easily tosses her onto the bed.

He reaches into the nightstand by the bed and pulls out a large hunting knife. Viciously, he slices the clothes off her. Cassandra doesn’t move, either in a state of shock or still stunned from the blows. Snake roughly forces her legs open while she struggles weakly.

“This motherfucker’s dead,” Junior said, looking at a space far beyond the television.

I tried to respond. My jaw clenched so tightly, the muscles around my mouth started trembling.

The world bloomed red. The room pulsed deep crimson in perfect time with my heartbeat. Heat surged from my eyes.

I stood up and pressed rewind. I ran the video back to the first blow when she walked in the door.

“I can’t watch that again, Boo.”

I pressed play.

“Goddamn it, Boo!” Junior’s voice sounded like he was yelling from the other end of a hallway.

I watched it again frame by frame. Watched Cassie’s fear with a sharp eye. Remembering it. Watched her in slow motion stumbling toward the heavy curtains. Her tiny hand brushing the curtains ever so slightly.

Ever so slightly enough.

Outside the window, at an angle toward the street, was a portion of a sign. I couldn’t make out any details, but I knew someone who could.

Gotcha, fucker.