I had been to university once. Years ago and just long enough to get the point of greater conformity and then go off and waste my time in a more haphazard, but less stupid fashion. I recall being forced to take an introductory class in critical thinking, and the professor, who was an old drunk, but actually smart as fuck, was lecturing on perception reality. I'm an asshole, always have been. An asshole with a smart mouth, and in those days I didn't hold my tongue, so when he postulated in class "How do you know you're alive?", I snapped back "Because I can feel my underwear!". Which I stole from either George Burns or George Carlin, I can't remember, but praise be to them both. To the professor's credit he took great delight in verbally eviscerating me for the entertainment of the entire class, the distinct contents of which I have forgotten, but the lesson was learned.
Point being, I was not having philosophical thoughts as I hiked along the top of the ridge that lead down into the city. My ankle hurt like a motherfucker and it was the little things that were bothering me. Not feeling my underwear, but I had put on a flannel shirt I found in the man's closet and as I dragged my swelling foot down the trail the stupid tag was scratching the back of my neck. I took it off, pulled out my knife and carefully cut it out. I was about to throw the tag away and keep going but decided it was every little thing sometimes that mattered. These were how you got caught. Shoot the wrong guy. Steal money from the wrong people, etc. that you can do, it's the getting away with it. Leaving little shirt tag clues on the trail when you have no idea who might be hunting you, well that's you fucking up. That's you getting tracked down and murdered in your sleep. I put it in my pocket and tried to concentrate on the best form of limp I could manage that still looked normal.
It was fully light out now and I was looking down at the city from the top of the ridge. The trail lead down to a shitty part of town. Dirty shirtless kids were playing around garbage bins overflowing, fat bastards in threadbare t-shirts with badly translated American English slogans printed on them were standing around smoking and telling lies about lives they never lived and women they never fucked. It was a good place to start. I scanned around for a few blocks watching the doors, seeing what kind of people were coming in and out. Eventually I found it, a door painted flat black with a single naked bulb above it that was on in the daylight. Every few minutes men would come out or go in. Men who didn't belong there in that part of the city, some who didn't belong in that country. Like me. A whorehouse is where nobody looks at anybody in the face. Why wouldn't a white guy be walking down this street? As long as he came from the direction of that place, no one would remember him. I looked from up high down on this map of urban filth and planned out a way around the back of the buildings until I could come out next to that door.
I had switched the bootlaces from the pair I had been wearing when we raided the plant to the man's pair of hiking boots, but I kept his laces in my pocket. It was time to switch them back. Mine looked normal enough, but had stainless steel wires inside them and screw on tips. I screwed off the tip that had been marked with two scratches and put that in my pocket and re tied the laces. I put that look on my face that says "I just stuck my cock into some total stranger and paid for it, and now I'm worried I'll give my wife an STD” and I started my descent into the ugly city.
There was an opening from the trail through some high bushes behind the whorehouse. I could hear the voices before I could see them and carefully peeked through to make sure they didn't see me enter the back courtyard. There were five of them on an upstairs porch busy looking through an open window and laughing at the show going on inside. I could hear a girl crying and screaming and then sobbing, whatever was happening to her up there sounded convincingly painful. I walked into the courtyard and surprised a sleeping fat guy who had been sprawled out in a rattan lounge chair getting a sunburn. He looked German, was drooling while he slept, and muttered something that sounded like "Ful shibin hauben mork" and went right back to sleep. There was a pink plastic kids car in the shape of a pony that someone had screwed a McDonald's tray to the top of with rusty drywall screws being used as a coffee table to his left, and there was a cup of steaming hot coffee on it with a paper umbrella in it, yellow, with the word “DaddY” written on it in a child's handwriting.
I came up the back stairs onto the upper porch silently so as not to disturb the boy’s fun, and stood over them a head taller and peered through the window to see their entertainment. He looked British, mid-50s, balding, and sweating. He had a girl who looked about 15 in a headlock from behind as he sat spread legged on the edge of a chair. There was a woman about 40 with big fake tits and a cesarean scar lying underneath him with his small flaccid cock in her mouth. She was holding the end of a big green rubber dildo with both hands. He was moving the young girl up and down on it anally. She was doing her screaming then crying then sobbing act. I say act because although it seemed real as hell, and disturbing, every few minutes she would get tired and take a break from the performance and he would get angry and yell "Come on Vidi!". Vidi must have been the name of the third girl who was perhaps 19 but dressed up in a Catholic Girl's school outfit with pigtails. She would then slap the anally busted girl hard across the face. Very hard, but with practiced precision, open hand, on the cheek, not the chin, or the eyes, it stung for a second, but the girls knew the game it seemed.
I leaned against the porch railing, testing it first to make sure it would hold as it looked like shit and was made of sun pocked PVC pipe and wrapped in sisal twine 20 years ago. I had a pack of cigarettes in my pocket and a gold lighter. I got them off the dead driver. I try to always carry cigs and a lighter if I have room, even though I've never been stupid enough to smoke. People's addictions are their weaknesses, and it never amazes me what people are willing to do for a cigarette. There's also this bizarre club aspect to smoking that works in your favor if you light someone's cigarette. They are all in that private club, the smoker’s club, the one that means, yeah I hate your skin color, the social status of the car you're driving, your religion, and the clothes you happen to be wearing, but yeah I need a cigarette too, so let's waste some time together while we poison the air of the people around us and talk some nonsense as we puff away.
Of the five gypsy boys in front of me, the oldest, who might have been 18, noticed me. I offered him a cigarette and lit it for him. He spoke English badly, but well enough for my purposes. We chatted for a few minutes in hushed tones. The others either didn't know English or didn't care to be involved in the business side of things, and kept watching the show. The British guy was a regular for the past three weeks. Had come three times each week on Saturday, Tuesday, and Thursday, always exactly at the same time. He overpaid, and liked to make the girls hit each other. He showed up drunk already, did some coke while he was there, never got hard, always got angry about it, and last week he had hit one of the younger hookers in the face with his fist and cut her cheek open with his wedding ring. The madame was pissed and she had the boys hold a knife to his throat as he went down to the ATM and pulled out enough cash to make it worth the trouble. Moreover he'd had the gall to tell them his name was Doctor Frankenstein. They all hated Mister Doctor Frankenstein, but he was running the show for now because he could pay for it. Or so he thought.
Mister Doctor Franky had also been paying the boys on the porch to watch, made 3 of them happy because they liked money, one them unnerved because he was gay, and the eldest pissed off because that was his sister with the dildo in her ass. He knew the game as he had been raised in the house but he shouldn't have to watch it. Mark point for me, this was going to cost me less now that he was extra motivated. We finished out chat and I went down to wait in the courtyard. I stole the fat snoring German’s coffee, stuck the cocktail umbrella in his hair, and sat in the shade under a big table umbrella with a rusted metal base that someone had stolen the concrete paver weights from. It rocked back and forth as the German snored. It had “Кока-Кола” printed on it in cyrillic letters.
After 15 minutes I could hear the Brit yelling something about not able to find his pants, and the boy I had struck a deal with turned and gave me that universal slightly twisting head nod that means shit was about to go down. I got up and walked around the front and waited at the corner of the building watching the exit door. A few minutes later the impotent Dr. Franky appeared all buckled up and sweating through his shirt. He had on a dirty white panama hat and walked quickly away from the door head down for the first block then broke into a lazy stroll from which he would never recover.
Hristo, my new young Gypsy business partner, had followed Dr. Franky before and new his route, so i had cut left 2 blocks before and was waiting next to the big yellow construction dumpster beside a half built communist era panel block building.
I was expecting to see the show, but something must have happened in those two blocks.I don't think it was Hristo getting overzealous, as he didn't seem the excitable type, but more likely the little gay kid with the dirty switchblade he was always twirling nervously. There was a big sloshing noise from inside the dumpster and Hristo appeared with a plastic bag of Dr. Franky's clothes. I asked about the hat, he said there was a little blood on it and "Sani will chist za teb". I did "only for the waiting" as requested and soon a tiny child with reddish brown skin wearing a spiderman pajama costume ran up with a fully "chisted" formerly white panama hat that was still mostly wet. Sani waited to get paid, Hristo slapped him on the back of the head lovingly and he ran away laughing.
I donned the clothes and the hat, rifled through the wallet and began to laugh. In the same annoying British accent Dr. Franky had, I said "Bloody Hell, he really was a doctor!". Hristo couldn't tell the difference between one stupid white man's accent and another and also failed to find the humor. He pulled a brand new iPhone 7 from the back pocket of his Diesel jean cutoff shorts and asked me for my "numear". I had a few SIMs tucked into my sock and i knew all those numbers by heart but I wasn't about to go giving them to Hristo or anyone else who I just conspired with in murder. "Give me yours" I said and he produced one of those thick white plastic ballpoint pens with the 4 colors each on a different slider. I didn't have any paper, remembered the shirt tag in my pocket that I had just switched the contents of to Dr. Frankys pocket and fished it out and handed it to him. He looked at it and handed it back saying "no myasto" which is fucking nonsense to me but I looked anyway . Indeed there was no space to write on it, as someone had already written "F. DelSanto". I put it back in my pocket and had him instead write his number inside the hat band where there was a dry spot.
I told Hristo to give me 2 days then meet me at the hotel pool at 2 in the afternoon. I got to the Doctor's hotel after a 20 minute walk, wearing his clothes, his hat, his accent, his reflective sunglasses, with his wallet in my pocket, but without any of his guilt. I decided not to call his wife, his office, or any of the colleges he was there to meet at the conference, but I did call room service and order the usual.
His usual order was terrible which was expected as the British are not known for cuisine or healthy diets, even the medical professionals, but I was starving, and now I was "The Doctor" and had to eat what the doc ate.
It wasn't the intent. It was a side effect, an unintended consequence. But it felt real now. Primal. Ignoring primal drives was something she had lots of training for and skill at, but learning when not to, when to let them guide you, well that she was still working on.
It was camoflauge really. The girl looked nothing like her. Nothing. She was tall and blonde and thin, with curves in all the right places. She had a Nordic face, and clear blue eyes. She had scars, but not the kinds that mothers have. The girl was short, black hair, brown skin, dark eyes, beautiful long lashes, and Eastern European features. They were both physically beautiful creatures in their own rights, and internally each was jealous of the other’s looks and age, but believed the other had no idea about this.
They looked like hell initially. She was sure to be questioned sooner rather than later by someone, a bell hop, a policeman, a "concerned" citizen, "Where are you going with that child?", and far worse yet the dreaded "Where did you get her?". So it was not find a hotel and hide the stolen car that was primary, it was shopping. Twenty-two little women’s only clothing stores that loved the fact she paid in cash later, and they were outfitted. matching, bathing suits, matching beach hats, matching cute little summer dresses, on and on. She looked like a do-gooder Nordic cunt trailing around her newly adopted brown girl daughter as per requisite summertime coastal resort town introduction luncheons and soirees demanded. No one questions high society. Especially not the women, after all they are spending all that glorious money their husband/asshole/princes/businessman/shitstain liars made, and that is a flow that must not be suppressed until long after he is in jail.
There was a full length mirror in the lobby of the car rental shop. They stood waiting for the convertible she had ordered. "Something automatic and big please. I won't be parking it myself." she had said.
She and the daughter with no name, together in the mirror, in perfectly matching outfits, standing side by side, hand in hand. The girl was wearing her big oversized sunglasses indoors just like mom. She had spent 25k in an afternoon. They looked ridiculous. They looked amazing. No one would say a fucking word except, "Yes Ma'am" and "Right this way Ma'am" and "Please be our guest" and "Here is a tasty little chocolate treat for your beautiful daughter". That's when it hit. Like a flood. She was numb all over with one single thought. She had done it once already, in a flash without preparation. She had killed a man to save this girl. That had started the adoption proceedings, the shopping had mixed the concrete, and now here in the mirror as they stood together unified, they were set, the two of them together, forever.
"Yes I will." She said to the little man handing her the keys to the big beautiful land yacht she was about to steal and drive off into the sunset with the daughter she had never changed diapers for. She was answering a wholly different question than the one he asked, which was "Would you like me to back it out of the lot for you Ma'am?". In her daze, some faceless, nameless, godlike inquisitor had been asking her instead "Will you protect this girl? Will you destroy the lives of anyone who would dare to harm her? Will you go to the ends of the earth in pursuit of evil assholes with prurient intents against her? Will you root out and eviscerate the men, women, and corporations who fuck this world up for your beautiful little daughter?". "Yes. Yes, please." She said to the little man. "Please bring the car around darling."
She smiled at him. "Smile for the nice man dear." She said to the girl. The child looked up at her. She said it again in Polish. Nothing. Then French, Nothing. She put a big smile on her face and indicated to the man. The girl smiled. Looked at the man with a big teethy grin. Off he ran to fetch the car.
They drove out of town heading south. She stayed off the highways, drove with the top down slowly through the grassy valleys. She stopped at every beautiful vista. She took pictures with medium format film camera she had bought with the money that now belonged to her daughter. She put sunscreen on her nose. On the girl's too.