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“You’re an idiot.”
I had heard those words before, not long ago. They had been shouted in anger then, but this time they seemed to carry a weight of concern—maybe even compassion.
Strong light glowed against my eyelids, and I cracked them open. Pain seared through my head as the light hit my eyes, and I squeezed them shut. A groan escaped my lips as I tried to roll over, but a firm hand on my shoulder held me down.
“Lie still.”
The voice was soothing, and I relented as fresh waves of torment rippled through my body. It felt like a rod of hot iron was being pressed through my abdomen. I took a few deep breaths and surrendered to the soft surface below me.
Was it a bed?
Everything hurt, but the softness below me felt like heaven. Smooth fabrics slid across my skin. My shirt was gone. I could feel bruises on my shoulders and hips where Magdela had dragged me across the docks. Memories drifted through my mind, but they were fleeting and unsure. Cargo containers, rain, yelling, and gunshots. That all seemed familiar. Everything now seemed wrong. The bright light, the soft bed, the smooth skin of gentle hands against my bare shoulder. Strange smells filled my nostrils. Flowers, fruit, and... bacon? I heard metal and porcelain clanking nearby, all undercut by the soft sizzle of fat rendering.
“Is he awake?” Another voice, this one sounding far away, carried to my ears. It was a woman. Thoughts of my ex-wife drifted through my mind. Are you awake? she would call from the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning. Those odd smells suddenly became more familiar. Potpourri, perfume, and cleaning chemicals masked with the scent of flowers and citrus. I hadn’t lived with a woman in almost ten years, but the familiarity of the scene came rushing back. I wasn’t sure if I should feel relieved or terrified, considering what it had been like last time I was in such a place.
“Yeah, kind of.” The first voice, nearby. So close I could feel the words as much as hear them.
Magdela.
I opened my eyes again, this time slowly and with a hand shading them from the harsh light overhead. Magdela sat next to me, on the edge of a bed covered in a flowery duvet. Her hair was plastered around her face, dark curls framing pale skin. There was a flush in her cheeks of genuine concern rather than the painted-on variety. Most of her makeup had washed off in the rain, but she was still beautiful, sitting over me like some guardian angel.
Pastel rose walls surrounded us. Curtains speckled with butterflies covered a window, illuminated by the occasional flash of lightning from outside. Porcelain dolls sat along one wall, a silent audience to this strange melodrama. Thunder rumbled through the room as my pulse pounded in my temples.
“Where?” I asked.
“We’re at a friend’s apartment,” Magdela said as she brushed some stray hair from my forehead. Lightning seems to surge through me as her fingers brushed against my skin. Her touch was soft and gentle. She cocked her head to one side and smiled, those ruby lips parting to reveal pearl-white teeth. Her eye shadow was smudged, and mascara was smeared across her cheeks. She hadn’t even taken the time to wash up. She had probably been sitting there watching over me, but...
“How long?” I groaned and tried to sit up again, but those soft hands turned firm as she pushed down on my shoulders. Something about the simple act stirred something inside me; a heat of passion I hadn’t felt in years. I wanted to fight back, to get to my feet and get back on the case. But even more, I wanted her to stop me.
“Lie still. You’ve only been out for about an hour. We’re in downtown, at my friend Alice’s apartment. She helped me patch you up.”
“What happened?” I groaned. I remembered rain and lightning. The ship and the girls. And...
“Boris!” I almost shot out of the bed, but again she held me down.
“They shot you. It went right through. You’re lucky Alice is a nurse; she was able to fix you up. But you have to rest now.” She grabbed a cold rag from a bedside table and wiped the beads of sweat I hadn’t even realized were on my forehead. Pain shot through my side again, and I surrendered back into the soft mattress below me.
As I lay there, the fog parted and my memories coalesced. The docks. The girls being loaded into cargo containers. The mobsters, and Boris. I fought to sit up again and almost screamed out as another wave of pain seared my abdomen. I placed a hand on my belly and felt gauze and medical tape covering it.
“I told you to stop,” Magdela said more forcibly this time, leaning over me to push me back into the bed. Her hands wrapped around my wrists and her face blocked the light. My eyes finally focused, and all I could see were those ruby lips. Magdela’s hair, still wet from the rain, cascaded around my face. Her chest pressed against mine, her bosom peeking out from under her little black dress and soft against my bare chest.
“Do I have to climb on top of you to get you to lie still?” she asked. Her breath was hot on my neck. Faded perfume mixed with stale rainwater and the sweat of the night’s business filled my nose.
“Only if you want to,” I whispered.
Her lips met mine.
Almost dying together could spark something in two total strangers. Humankind had a passion for life, and nothing stoked those fires like the threat of death. Our lips pressed together with a primal urge, and she parted hers slightly to let my tongue inside her. Hands groped roughly across flesh, and the pain from the gunshot faded as a new throbbing took precedence in my mind.
“Hey guys, breakfast is rea—” Alice stopped herself in the doorway. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Breakfast for one, as always,” she sighed as she pulled the door closed.
* * *
THE FIRST ORANGE GLOW of dawn was just coloring the clouds in the east as I stood before the window, looking out over the city. Steel and concrete stretched almost as far as I could see, and beyond that, great mountains rose like a wall around the mass of humanity. Past those mountains was the desert, and as far as I’d ever been.
“What’s out there?” Magdela asked from under the blankets.
“I don’t know,” I answered. Maybe it was a better life, or more likely just more of the same. New Angeles wasn’t an island of decadence. All across the country, and even the world, the urban sprawl had taken over. Suburbs had given way to slums as the middle class ceased to exist long ago. The countryside was a lawless badland where the only sign of order were the massive corporate farms guarded by private armies. The American dream had been a lie, and now all that mattered was survival, or the next drink, or the next score.
I turned away from the horizon and all the hopelessness it represented, and looked back at Magdela as she got dressed. She wasn’t the most attractive woman I’d run into lately, or the funniest. She was probably the strongest, though. There was a fire in the woman which refused to be quenched—a drive to put things right. That kind of hope, that kind of passion, was rare these days. Because of this, Magdela was one of a kind.
“Hungry?” she asked.
I nodded, also realizing I hadn’t had a cigarette since I’d woken up in the apartment. “Can we smoke in here?”
“I think Alice can make an exception, considering you’ve been shot.”
I pulled my shirt on, wincing as the newly stitched wound on my side protested. I tucked the gun into my waistband out of habit and followed Magdela out to the main room of the apartment. This space didn’t scream femininity as much as the bedroom, but it still felt fancy compared to what I was used to. Oak shelves dotted the walls, filled with ceramic statues of fanciful creatures like dragons and unicorns. Framed paintings filled the empty spaces, sporting castles and meadows. Books were strewn about everywhere, like Alice was reading them all at once and no matter where she went, one was within reach.
Speaking of our host, she was sitting on the couch with a book in her hand. Her blond hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail and thick glasses covered her eyes. With an apartment like this, she should be able to afford ocular implants, but she still used the archaic old external lenses. In fact, everything about this woman screamed old-fashioned. The books, the fantasy art, the glasses... it all seemed like a relic from a hundred years ago. Was she holding out hope things could be this way, or was she just escaping to a better place? Probably the latter.
“Alice, do you have an ashtray?” Magdela asked as she rummaged around in the kitchen.
“No, I don’t smoke,” Alice said, peering out over the top of the book at me. Her eyes betrayed the embarrassed grin she was hiding behind the pages. Probably not every day Alice’s friend brings a random guy to her apartment, bleeding from a gunshot wound, then has sex with him in her bed.
“It’s fine.” Magdela walked out into the sitting area with a small steel saucepan holding an inch of water. “This’ll do.”
I sat down in a cushy armchair and lit up a smoke.
Magdela sat on the couch next to Alice and did the same before asking, “So, what’s our next move?”
“I’m not sure. We’re out of strings to pull.” I took a drag of the cigarette and tapped the ash into the saucepan.
“Then we take what we have and go to the police. We connected Dreamworks to Talbot, and him to the mob. We have pictures of the girls at the docks. If we hurry, they might even stop the ship from leaving the harbor,” Magdela said.
I shook my head. “No, it won’t happen that fast. We probably have a good enough case for the courts, but Talbot will fight it. With the kind of money he has, he’ll have the best lawyers, too. Hell, he might have every judge in town in his pocket. Even if he gets convicted, it’ll take years to duke it out in the system. Meanwhile, they’ve made public enemy number one out of me on the holovids. As soon as we walk in the door, they’ll lock me up, and fallen cops don’t last a week on the inside. I’ll probably get shivved on the first day. And you,” I paused to take another drag of the cigarette, “are going to be hunted down by every goon in the city. You have to leave... today.”
“No,” Magdela said. “Everybody I know is here. I can’t just leave.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Alice said. “Why don’t you both just leave town? Go start over together out east?”
It was a good question. I doubt I’d made national news. With the new barcode, I could go east and start a new life. Maybe settle down as a private dick in New York. I could leave all this behind and start over. Walk away from it all and never look back. My eyes met Magdela’s, and I could see she was thinking the same thing. There was a sorrow there. The light of passion was being eclipsed by the memory of her friend’s murder and the fate of all those girls being shipped overseas, probably to be sold off as sex slaves or to be crammed into a Russian cyber den. I could tell Magdela was just waiting for me to cut and run, snuffing out her spark of hope once and for all.
I rubbed a hand across my face. “No. What’s happening here isn’t right, and I couldn’t live with myself if I just walked away from it. Somebody has to do something, and right now we’re the only ones who can bring this to light.”
Magdela sighed and shot me a smile which threatened to thaw what little ice was left in my veins. Was I going soft? Was it her fault, or was this about revenge for Frank, a partner I couldn’t stand in life and can’t forget about in death? Either way, here I was, and I had to figure out what to do next.
“So,” Alice cut in, “get this Talbot guy to confess.”
It sounded ridiculous, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Were this still a typical police investigation, I’d have enough evidence to confront the primary suspect. I’d haul him to HQ and lock him in a room to be grilled until he spilled the beans. Of course, Talbot was one of the untouchables. I could never haul a man with that kind of money and power in like some street punk. But this wasn’t a police investigation. This was something else now, and the rules weren’t the same.
“That’s just crazy enough to work,” I muttered.
“I don’t see any other options,” Magdela said. “Let’s go.”
“No,” I said as I dropped the butt in the shallow pot of water. “This is still too dangerous. You stay here where you’ll be safe.”
“Oh, hell no,” she said as she rose and opened a box on a bookshelf. She pulled a small pistol from it, slapped a magazine home, and yanked back on the slide. “I’ve gotten you this far, and I’m not letting you finish it alone.”