Authors: Ashley Rhodes
Naomi
I stopped by my apartment to change. Nothing skimpy. The point was to blend in but avoid getting too much attention. Black button up, no cleavage; blue jeans, but not the pair that made my ass look too good. Pony-tail, as usual. I rolled my sleeves up, and tried to imagine that I was, as Mr. Simmons had called me, a man hating dyke. The kind that might kick your ass for making a pass. I thought about maybe even cutting my hair short, but it would take too much time.
The danger of where I was going was very real to me. I didn’t have any delusions of grandeur about what I was walking into. That part of town was violent. Yvonne saw trauma patients from the Downs come though the ward all the time—stabbings, shootings, brutal rapes. My heart hadn’t stopped pounding since I resolved to go find Jack. I knew he was there. He had to be. He’d said it himself. He thrived in that world. When I was lost, and cut off, and hurt, I went to the world that I was comfortable with. Everyone did, it was human nature. Jack was an asshole, but he was a human asshole.
“What are you doing?” I asked myself in the mirror. “What the fuck are you thinking?”
But if I could get to him, if I could tell him how I felt, if I could convince him that Jason’s threats, whatever they were, were empty—hell, I’d quit my job and leave this town forever if it meant being with Jack.
Assuming he felt the same way.
It was a gamble. Yes. I knew that. It was a dangerous, stupid gamble that could cost me more than just a broken heart. I was scared shitless.
But I tore myself away from the mirror anyway, and got into my car, and drove to the Downs.
To call it the bad part of town suggested that there was a good part of town. There wasn’t, not really. But most of the truly awful element in the city was concentrated here. The police precinct in the Downs had gone defunct decades ago, and every mayor since had promised to put money into rehabilitating it. It was a perennial campaign promise that people fell for every time; there hadn’t been a mayor with two consecutive terms in ten years because of it. Each time, the people of the Downs voted in whoever promised to raise them out of perdition. Each time they were let down.
Part of that, Jason had explained before, was that the mob ruled the Downs and they were not about to give up the crown. The people they couldn’t bribe, they threatened. The people that couldn’t be threatened, they simply removed from the equation. Allegedly, of course.
Years and years ago, before I ever imagined stepping foot in the neighborhood, the boss who had preceded Valentino had actually kept the place running fairly clean. There was crime, but it was his crime. I think Jason said his name was Ramon Garmingoni, or Gambleroni or… something with a G and an ‘oni’ on the end. I hadn’t paid much attention.
The point he’d made then was that G—oni had been a gentleman monster, a player the police knew and understood and, as much as Jason hated the man, he had to admit that things had gotten steadily worse once he was out of power and Valentino took over.
Valentino was a genuine, real-life villain; a mob boss and slum lord who had his bulldog jaws clamped around the throat of the Downs and the people who lived there and didn’t intend to let go.
It showed.
It was getting dark by the time I got there—cage fights, I assumed, happened at night. I didn’t park in the neighborhood. I had to choose between risking my car being stolen and not being able to run far enough to outrun someone; or having to run several blocks but ultimately getting to a car and peeling out. I chose the option that offered the best chance of escape if it came to that.
Only half the street lights actually worked—less, the further west I walked down second street toward the old docks. There, Randall had mostly explained, the cage fights, dog fights, cock fights—basically any two animals, human or otherwise, in a cage and fighting to death or unconsciousness—happened on a regular basis. They made the local ‘royalty’ millions, and people came from around the country and even overseas to see the fights. It was a well-known pastime for traveling one-percenters.
I passed homeless people who mostly left me alone or gave me long, leering looks. I had one hand in my pocket, my keys arranged between my fingers like makeshift claws if the need arose; the other hand was in my small, undecorated purse around the can of mace I kept there. I’d never used it, but it was easy, right? Point and squeeze. Don’t get it in my own eyes. Against my tense grip was the roll of cash I’d withdrawn; five hundred dollars that I figured I might need to show I deserved to watch the match. Money was the universal language, right? I just hoped it was enough.
The quality of cars parked on the street created a clear dividing line between the Downs and the rest of the city. There were fewer of them, for one thing, and they stopped being used but largely functional cars in the buffer zone between the Downs and everything else, and started being the kind with duct-tape instead of glass windows, long scratches, graffiti, and rust. The sort of third or fourth hand cars that were all the residents of the ‘bad part of town’ could reasonably afford.
I’d worn flats instead of heels; soft soled, so they crunched quietly along the concrete sidewalk instead of tap-tapping like heels would have. The less attention I got, the better. I liked to think it paid off—I made it to the docks without any molestation. I hadn’t seen a single cop on the way in and now, suddenly, despite everything he’d done, I wished Jason was with me.
I breathed deep, steady breaths, and tried to slow my hammering heart. Lots of people came here, day in and day out. If every woman that walked into this got raped or something, things around here would get a lot more scrutiny. Surely Valentino maintained some kind of order in his own house, right? In movies, mobsters were always well dressed, and old-world Italian, and they were more concerned with getting rich off of order than off of chaos and mayhem. Whatever Valentino’s rule of law was, there was a rule; there had to be. I was in danger here, but not in immediate danger. There was every chance that Valentino wasn’t even here.
There were many, many other people though. It took me a while to spot it, but when I did it was almost obvious. People lingered all around the docks in varying states of mind, dress, undress, and general malaise. Some of them looked like they were probably worth millions, others looked like they were hoping for handouts from them.
But around one of the many old warehouses, there was a concentration of people milling about, sipping drinks and smoking and occasionally having animated conversations. There was a dull roar coming from that direction, though from a distance it echoed around the docks and made it difficult to tell exactly where it was coming from.
I approached, chanting to myself confidence, confidence, confidence. I had cash. I was here to bet on a fight. I wasn’t rich, but looking for a little excitement and maybe a big win. Simple as that. It had to happen all the time, right?
By what looked like and entrance to the place, there was a tall, thickly muscled Latin guy with a bald head and a bad attitude. I approached him; he looked like the sort of guy you put on guard duty, or door duty, or whatever kind of duty might involve breaking heads. I didn’t quite saunter, but I wasn’t un-sexy, I thought.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m here for… uh… the action. I have cash. It’s my first time…” God, I felt lame. What was I thinking? I should have planned this part better. I’d rehearsed something, but even now thinking about the plan that I was some rich lady slumming it for the evening sounded just as stupid. There’s no way this guy would let me in, he’d assume I was wired or even—
“Got cash?” he asked.
I withdrew the wad, showed it to him.
Her jerked a thumb at the door, knocked twice. It opened, and I was in. Easy as that. Maybe they didn’t care about cops? Maybe they had paid people off. That was how all this worked, right?
It was loud. There were throngs of people inside. I looked up and around at the place and realized why I hadn’t heard this much noise from outside—the whole building was lined with alternating tiles of heavy foam that made a checkered pattern of vertical and horizontal lines, and they made the wall above the door about a foot and a half thicker than it should have been. Probably, there was even more space behind the acoustic foam.
For good reason. I couldn’t hear myself think in this place. Somewhere ahead, through a dim, smoky room that smelled like people and cigarettes and spilled, stale alcohol, I could see the top of an actual cage, exactly like I expected somehow; a plain, chain-link fence with tall metal posts, walled and covered and whatever was happening there had the people around it shouting and cheering and hissing in some odd tempo that probably matched the beating taking place inside.
I had the ridiculous, sudden certainty that Jack was in that cage. I tore through the crowd, ignoring complaints, compliments, and everything else to get to the edge of the cage and show Jack that I was here; that I’d come, and that I wanted him to survive, just survive, and then come with me and…
I didn’t recognize the two men in the ring. They were both beaten bloody, and they were still moving quickly, light on their toes, feinting one another out until finally one of them lunged, apparently to tackle the other man until, at the last moment, he jerked up as his opponent lowered his upper body to meet the incoming attack he’d been expecting, and instead hammered his shin across the man’s face. Blood exploded from the opponent’s nose, and he dropped. Immediately, he was pushing himself back up.
Watching was out of the question. I couldn’t look at this kind of violence, it made my stomach sick. Both of these men were easily as built as Jack, maybe even bigger, but it wasn’t what I had imagined when I’d envisioned Jack in the ring. I thought of him as maybe more martial, somehow, more precise. These men were in this ring to kill one another, or almost. The fallen one got up, shook it off, and they met again with a series of vicious, brutal bare-knuckled jabs and hooks and counters that made sickening bone-cracking sounds even through the din of the spectators.
I pulled away from the side of the ring, sick to my stomach. I had to find out something about Jack. He’d said that he never lost; that he was actually supposed to have lost last time but hadn’t. So they had to know him here. Did he actually go by ‘Jack Hawke’ or did he have some kind of fighter name? It didn’t seem like it.
Looking around, I tried to find someone who looked like a regular. Someone not losing their mind, for one thing, and someone who might not mind being interrupted… I spotted a woman. She was dressed conservatively, though her blouse was still cut low enough under her white suit-coat that I could see her breasts basically just out there for the world to look at. She was maybe half an inch shy from being entirely topless on either side.
She had short, white-blond hair and brown eyes under dark, long, perfectly curled eyelashes, and when I came close to her she glanced at me once, gave me the once-over, and then looked away.
“This is great!” I said over the crowd to her. Jesus, I should have at least gotten a drink or something.
She didn’t respond.
“Who are these guys? I want to make a bet but I don’t know who I’m betting on!” I smiled, and made a show of looking like I was trying to look over the heads of the people in front of us.
“Torque is the big black one with the scar on his chest,” she said finally, leaning a bit to be heard rather than shouting. “Kareem is the lighter skinned one with a mohawk. Tell the booker the black or brown one, he’ll know.”
“Wow,” I said. “Thanks! I was told I should come in when Jack Hawke was fighting. I guess I missed him.”
She appraised me, her face inscrutable.
“Just, one of my girlfriends is a big fan,” I said, sort of simpering a little. “She said last time she saw him fight she got a little… after party, I guess.” I winked, and bit my lip. “I saw him once, a picture she showed me. Um… have you seen him around? Is he fighting tonight? I was hoping I’d get to see him, and heard he might be here…”
The woman pursed her lips, and then looked at the ring, and then back at me. She was making some decision.
Finally, she did. “He’s here,” she said. “He’s in the back corner, having a drink before his fight. You said you’re a friend of a friend? I might better let him know you’re here.”
“Well,” I said, nervous but eager to get to him and not entirely sure he’d agree to see me, “maybe I should go with you. I mean… he might not know my name, you know, but he’d recognize me… honestly, I was a little embarrassed but… we kind of…”
She gave me a knowing smile. “I completely understand. What’s your name?”
“Naomi,” I said. No last name. I didn’t want any of these people looking me up afterward.
“Come with me, Naomi,” she said. “I’ll take you to him.”
I followed her through the crowd, a mix of fear and excitement and anger, rehearsing in my head what I would say to him. That he was a bastard? That he was ignorant, and an idiot, and that this place would kill him, and that he’d broken my heart and that I hated him and that I wanted him to come with me, please, and let’s just get out of this place…
The corners of the back of the place approached us over the heads of the crowds of people, until finally we broke through some invisible barrier that formed a wide, empty space around a tall-backed, circular booth. There were men at it, all of them well dressed and slick looking. They had gold on their fingers, on their necks, and even pinned in their ties and, when they wore them, their hats. They were discussing something heatedly over drinks, and two large guys in pin-striped black suits stood outside the booth, projecting that invisible force field that warded off the crowd with the plain promise of violence should the threshold be breached.