I didn’t expect to miss Clare this much. We’ve only been apart half a day and I already feel… empty.
This is how it has to be. We can’t be together, so it’s better that we part ways sooner than later.
And yet… for the first time in my life I wish I were someone else. Someone without a prison record, and a long history of bloodshed, and a future bound to be even more violent.
Clare is a good woman. A man like me doesn’t deserve a good woman.
Just look at me now. I’m about to do something that would make Clare extremely upset. It might even make her despise me. If she were here, she’d certainly try to stop me—which is why she’s not here.
I’m standing in the old slaughterhouse on Division Street, the tools of my trade laid out in front of me on a black silk cloth.
I’ve always been skilled at getting what I want out of people. I used these same techniques on Clare, though much more gently. I touched and teased her body, caressed and manipulated her. Made her feel exactly what I wanted her to feel. Convinced her to do things she never imagined she’d agree to, let alone enjoy…
Torture is the same.
It’s bringing a man to the brink, over and over again, until his mind begins to fracture. Until he forgets everything he believed about himself. Until his will bends to mine, and he tells me everything I want to know.
I went easy on Niall Maguire, because I still hoped to salvage the agreement between his family and mine.
I’ll offer no such leniency to my subject today.
Officer Wicker sits on the folding chair in front of me, his hands tied behind his back, a hood over his head.
I recognized him that night outside my uncle’s hotel when six officers tried to turn Clare and me into bullet soufflé. Out of all the dirty vice cops, he’s one of the filthiest. Whether Chief Parsons has confided in him or not, he’s a sneaky motherfucker with his ear to the ground, and he’ll know something.
I found him down under the overpass, getting a blow job from a teenaged prostitute. The cops take their cut from the girls, just like the pimps do.
Wicker was in an unmarked car, and the girl was young enough that she didn’t know that Crown Vics are always cop cars, whether they’ve got lights on top or not. I assume Wicker rolled up, let the girl make her pitch, then grabbed her, cuffed her, and tossed her in the back. He took her beneath the underpass instead of to the station so she could “work off her infraction” without getting booked.
All of that was fairly routine. But Wicker is a sadistic motherfucker. He roughed the girl up even though she was cooperating, keeping her hands cuffed behind her back while he made her blow him. She was sobbing and snuffling, blood dripping down from her nose.
I smashed the driver’s side window with a golf club, dragging Wicker out by the collar before he could grab his gun from the holster down around his knees. I flung him down on the cement, kicking him in the face for good measure.
The girl was screaming.
I said, “Shut the fuck up before you call all his buddies over here.”
The girl shut her mouth fast. She had big blue eyes, unwashed hair, and a smattering of freckles. I could tell she was wondering whether she’d just fallen out of the frying pan into the fire.
Yury found the keys to the cuffs and unlocked her.
“Search the car,” I told Emmanuel.
He found a kilo of snow in the trunk, as well as an envelope full of cash.
“Bribe?” Yury said, rifling through the bills curiously.
“That’s a hefty fucking bribe,” I said, counting ten thousand dollars at a glance.
I took the money from Yury, the thick envelope almost disappearing in my hand. I shoved it at the girl.
“Take it,” I barked when she hesitated. “Get out of Desolation. Go to school. Don’t let me see you down here again.”
The girl clutched the envelope, staring back and forth between us like she didn’t believe it. Then, with one last venomous glare at Wicker groaning on the ground, she turned tail and sprinted away as fast as her stilettos and skin-tight skirt would allow.
“Starting a scholarship for hookers?” Emmanuel laughed, one eyebrow raised in disbelief.
Truthfully, the girl’s freckles reminded me of Clare, though the rest of her bore no resemblance. It’s why I kicked Wicker harder than was strictly necessary. But I wasn’t about to tell Emmanuel that, or Yury either.
Yury might have guessed anyway. He was avoiding meeting my eye as he hauled Wicker up and chucked him in the back of Emmanuel’s Escalade.
“Off we go,” Emmanuel said, cheerfully.
“Just a second,” I said, walking back around to the trunk of the Crown Vic. Emmanuel had left the brick of cocaine laying where he found it, under the spare tire.