She crawled across the floor and reached for Moss’s gun.
Despite everything, Cruz felt calm. Very cool. He had seen worse than this. A lot worse. He had seen worse this very afternoon.
He held up his gun again. “Pamela,” he said.
She looked up at him. He pointed the gun at her and drew a bead down the barrel. He didn’t want to kill her. That was the last thing he wanted. Her face was perfectly centered in his iron sights.
There was no way he could pull this trigger.
“Pamela, if you pick up that gun I’m going to kill you. What I want you to do is crawl right back to where you were.”
Long seconds passed.
She backed away from the gun.
“That’s a good girl.”
As Pamela crawled away, Cruz moved in and picked up the gun. Then he backed into his doorway again, where he could get a better view of the whole apartment. He looked back over at Lola and Moss. Moss was up, circling in. He was still laughing, but he didn’t sound as enthusiastic as before. Lola circled away from him.
“Yessir,” he said, almost to himself. “I never seen anything like it.”
She swung and he blocked it with his thick arm, but an instant later her other hand came around and caught him on the side of the head. Then a foot shot up and kicked him in the balls. She danced away, just out of his reach.
“Lola!” Cruz called.
She cast an eye at him, all the while minding Moss.
“I want you to stop now,” Cruz said. “If you don’t, then I’m going to have to kill Pamela. Do you hear me? We’re here to see you. Pamela is worth nothing to us. If you don’t stop I promise I will kill her. If you do stop, I promise I’ll let her live. How does that sound to you?”
Lola faced Moss again.
“Lola, I’m going to kill her right now. Do you understand?”
Sure, she understood. She must have because she hesitated for moment, then let her arms go slack by her sides. She was winded, and she had a fine sheen of sweat on her face. Cruz pictured her dancing at a nightclub with a similar sheen on her. For an instant, he pictured her moving in bed, her body glistening.
“All right,” she said. “You win.”
Moss walked over to her.
“My friend’s going to give you some handcuffs to put on,” Cruz said.
Instead, Moss smacked her hard across the face, an open hand slap. She fell backwards onto the couch.
“The bitch kicked me in the balls,” Moss said. He wiped his mouth with his hand.
Cruz watched as Moss took out the cuffs and slapped them on.
Cruz looked at Pamela. What to do about her?
Moss came over and stuck out his hand. It seemed a foot wide. He didn’t look Cruz in the eye. He doesn’t like that, Cruz thought. Tangling with a little girl, and being rescued by me. He doesn’t like me. Cruz had known this since yesterday, but it was the first time he actually thought the words. Moss didn’t like him. Moss might look for a reason to kill him.
“Gun, please.”
Cruz handed Moss his gun back.
Moss looked down at Pamela on the floor. He toyed with his gun a moment, as if he were thinking everything over.
“You serious?” he said. “You plan on keeping this one?” He pointed at Pamela with the gun. It would take nothing, a few ounces of pressure, a mistake, and he would shoot her in the face.
“I gave my word, didn’t I?”
Moss shook his head. “Son, this is the most fucked up job ever.”
Hal and Darren sat slumped way down below the dashboard of Hal’s Eldorado. They watched as down the block, the two men came out with Lola and the other girl. The smaller guy seemed to be leading Lola along by her elbow. Oh, they weren’t cops, these two. Something deeper was going on.
Hal felt that old tickle of curiosity. This was even better than what they came for, maybe. “Her hands seem to be cuffed to you?” he said to Darren. “You catch a glint of metal there or anything? Both the girls, they got handcuffs on?”
Darren was watching. “I dunno. Can’t tell. What did you think?”
Hal shrugged. “I think I saw something.”
He kept watching. Now he really saw something. Up ahead, the two men opened the trunk of the Taurus and helped the girls inside. What the fuck? They put the girls in the trunk! And the girls went right on in there!
Unbelievable!
“Did you see that?” Darren said.
“I saw it.”
“What do you want to do? Call the cops?”
Hal’s wheels were turning like mad. “I don’t know. And say what? This girl we were trying to put into porno just got abducted by two other guys? First off, I don’t like to let two guys just walk off with my girl. Second off, I don’t want to just hand this over to the cops. Could be something big here. Could be money involved. Could be Lola needs to be rescued, and we’re the ones who need to do it. What do you say? You want to follow these guys? I mean, if we let them go, what else are we doing tonight? Aren’t you the least bit curious about what’s going on?”
Darren heaved a heavy sigh. “Did you see the size of that guy?”
“I saw him. Don’t worry, partner. I saw him, and we’ll steer clear of him until we’re good and ready.”
“Do I have any other choice?” Darren said.
Hal smiled. “Nope. It’s either this or crawl back to Auburn with your tail between your legs.”
He waited until the Taurus had turned left at the next corner onto Congress Street. Up at this end of town, the top of Munjoy Hill, Congress dead-ended into a quiet street of walk-up apartment buildings and storefronts. Down at the bottom of the hill, it became the main artery for downtown Portland.
Hal pulled out onto the street and cruised to the corner of Congress. The car was up ahead, driving down Munjoy Hill into the lights of downtown.
“We should’ve used handcuffs the other night,” Darren said. “On Lola, I mean. Keep her pacified.”
“Maybe we will,” Hal said. “Maybe we’ll make handcuffs a regular part of the act.”
Hal made a left, and he and Darren followed the Taurus downhill. The naked bulb shone bright white, while the rest of the taillights shone red and yellow. Darren had done a good job. Hal was going to be able to read that thing from a hundred yards back.
Hal knew how to tail.
For a long time, Hal had drifted from place to place and job to job. For a while he worked as a security guard, and that job led to undercover store security, and finally to a gig working with a private detective agency. He spent five years as a detective, then started his own firm and went belly-up in a matter of months. But he was good at surveillance, he knew that much.
In truth, Hal figured that he excelled at almost everything he did. Amazing really, since he had just about graduated high school, after all. Now, he had spent more than twenty years finding out how good he could be at things.
Tailing with one car, though, this was going to be work.
“You’re letting ‘em get too far ahead,” Darren said.
“I got ‘em,” Hal said.
“Yeah, but…”
“Brother, you got to keep it shut and let me do this, okay?” He said it forcefully, in a way that would pre-empt any more conversation. He needed all the concentration he could muster, and he couldn’t afford a smoked up Darren butting in every couple of minutes. Darren was not the brains of this operation.
The Taurus was three blocks in front already. Ahead and far below was the skyline of the city, lit up at night. Hal let them put on a nice lead, and kept his eye on that broken taillight. It disappeared for a second behind another car, then came back. He didn’t worry. It took an instinct, and he had it. You had to know where that car was going to be. Here was his guess: they would turn right on Washington Avenue and head for the highway – 295 North – or they would head straight downtown.