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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
Over the next couple of months Jennifer gave more than a little thought to replacing Skyhook – maybe not right away, but perhaps in the next couple of years if she could work out the right deal. It was hard for her to give up airplanes, after all; over the years she’d owned and operated four airplanes, not counting the one she’d set up for the missionary organization in Bolivia. Of those four, she’d sold two, Magic Carpet, which she regretted selling and had bought back when the opportunity arose, and the Mooney she had nicknamed Soiled Dove. She was starting to regret selling that a little – when she moved up to the Bar H Bar, it would have been faster for commuting to Phoenix than the little Cessna. It was something to think about, but fortunately she knew she didn’t have to think about it right away.
But when she moved up to the ranch there would be much less personal need for the Learjet. Right now it was very handy to have since she was frequently flying to see Will in Mississippi, but when he moved away from there, wherever it was he wound up going, the need for having an airplane that was that expensive to operate would become a lot less. Slower planes but also less expensive to operate would do for most of her personal needs.
What that meant was that Skyhook or its replacement would be much more of a charter airplane with the intent of making money, rather than a personal toy. Even now it was sometimes difficult to schedule time to use the Learjet herself, and the call for it seemed to be increasing. Could she justify buying a second jet? As she and Mike went over the records, it seemed like an expensive and marginal proposition. She may have been well off, but she wasn’t that well off, especially with the need to build an expensive house lying in wait.
In the end, she decided that she didn’t need to be in a rush about doing anything, but wait and see what happened, especially what happened with Will. In a year, things might be a lot clearer.
While she was reaching that conclusion, she was also involved with other things, including flying to see Will when she could, and her work at Lambdatron. Since the first of the year she had met with Nanci on several occasions to work on Beginner’s Guide to Sex Work, its current but probably not final title.
They both recognized that there were still some weak spots in the book, such as for girls who did outcalls, especially working through an agency. From time to time they both met with girls who had experience in that end of the business, and they added some valuable comments; one time Jennifer flew Nanci up to the Redlite in Skyhook to interview a couple of girls there who had that kind of experience. Nanci said it was the difference between night and day to what she had gone through. Either way she was glad to have put the business behind her, but she said that she hoped her efforts would help some other girl either escape the life or not get into it in the first place.
By the first part of May Jennifer had reached the point where any more work on the book would be just changing things for the sake of changing them, not really improving them. However, there was still work needed on the illustrations, which all agreed were important for reaching out to girls with limited literacy. In a phone call Shirley reported that Cookie, the girl who was trying to build a career as a commercial artist but paying the bills working at the Redlite, was there for a three-week shift. Jennifer decided to fly up to meet with her, and she asked Norma if she’d like to go along for the ride.
“Sure, why not?” Norma replied. “It looks like a nice day for it, and since I’ve turned in my dissertation I’m not that busy right now.”
Skyhook was out on charter, as it often was, so they had to take Songbird, which Jennifer didn’t mind in the slightest. Though she loved flying the jet, she liked the Cessna 310 just about as well. It was out on charter almost as much as the Learjet; one of the options she had considered was to use it as her commuter plane for when she was living at the Bar H Bar and buying another plane, perhaps a little bigger, for Skyhook Aviation to use.
Since it was still late in the morning, things were as slow around the Redlite as they usually were around that time of day. Norma and Jennifer settled in with Cookie in the conference room near George’s office to go over the drawings, and it was clear that the girl had some talent. Her illustrations were simple line drawings, but had a little bit of humor in each one so it looked like they would fit the bill. There were a couple, however, that did not quite fit the message that Jennifer thought they should send, so they were talking about them when some shouting erupted from up the hall: “What the fuck do you mean you ain’t gonna hire her?” an angry male voice bellowed.
They could hear George replying, but his words weren’t quite loud enough to make out what he was saying. But they could hear the angry response. “You’ll goddamn well put her to work and I’ll make goddamn sure she puts out if I have to stand over her with a baseball bat.”
“Uh-oh,” Norma commented, keeping her voice low. “Sounds like another pimp wants to shove his girl off on George.”
“Won’t be the first time some idiot has tried that,” Jennifer replied, her voice just as low. “I wonder if they’ll ever learn.”
It was something that occasionally happened. Every now and then some pimp brought a girl to the place trying to get her to work there, but the girls were usually so drugged up and thrashed out that they wouldn’t work out to begin with. Bitter experience had proved that if the girl didn’t have drive enough to work without a pimp standing over her they wouldn’t have the drive to do a good job for the customer.
Again George said something they couldn’t make out, but they could hear the even louder reply: “You’ll either put her to work or I’ll make goddamn sure you wish you had.”
“I think I know someone who’s going to be sorry,” Cookie replied softly with a smirk on her face as they heard steps coming down the hall.
“No fooling,” Jennifer giggled as she caught a glimpse of Clay Herring, the maintenance man, rush past. Clay was about six-foot-six of former Southeastern Conference Division I linebacker and sometime pro wrestler who had found his spot in life at the Redlite, where he doubled as a bouncer. He was rarely called on for that part of the job, but he was not someone to argue with under any circumstances.
Wanting to see the show, the three women quietly got up and peeked around the door frame just in time to hear Clay’s firm but loud voice, “Fucker, the man done told you to get the hell outa here, so you’d best get the hell outa here.”
“Fuck you,” they heard the intruder say. “If you’re workin’ in a fuckin’ whorehouse you ain’t man enough to make me leave.”
That might not have been the brightest thing to say to Clay. Jennifer, Norma, and Cookie could see Clay step into the office, and in a second there was a thud as the intruder bounced off the hallway wall opposite of George’s office.
Now they could get a good look at the guy; he was slender, and a good foot shorter than George, and had a switchblade in his hand. It didn’t stay there long; Clay kicked the knife out of his hand, then picked him up with one hand and belted him with a roundhouse right that had started somewhere out around the airstrip. That bounced the man off the wall again, and this time he hit it hard enough that he knocked some pictures down.
Clay picked him up again, belted him a couple more times just on general principles, then with George and the three women following them, drunk-walked him down the hall into the lounge and right out the front door. Shirley buzzed the remotely operated front gate open, and in seconds the man was flying across the parking lot and landing with a thump on the asphalt.
The bouncer noted that the guy was barely moving, so without a word closed the gate and walked back into the building.
“Good job, Clay,” George said as Clay walked back inside; Jennifer noted that George had a large pistol in his hand. “I was getting just about ready to hit the call button. I owe you one.”
“Naw,” the big guy replied. “That’s what I get paid for, but it feels good to paste an asshole like that once in a while.”
“What happened to the girl he was trying to pawn off on us?” George asked Shirley.
“I’ve got her in my office,” she replied. “She’s pretty wasted, and it looks like he worked her over quite a bit. She’s a mess.”
“Is she in good enough shape to drive him out of here?”
“George, she’s barely in good enough shape to walk, and besides, she’s flying on something.”
“Well, shit,” George snorted. “Somebody go find Betty Boop. I know she was on last night, so she’s probably asleep, but she probably ought to take a look at that gal.”
“I’ll go find her,” Cookie said and headed for the back of the building.
Shirley looked at the TV monitor that covered the parking lot. “He’s coming around,” she said. “He better get his ass out of here or I’ll call the sheriff.”
Apparently he didn’t get the message. He picked himself up, worked his way back over to the gate, pushing on the button, yelling frantically – they could hear his words over the speaker. “You fuckin’ assholes, I ain’t leaving here without my woman. You let her out or I’m gonna come in and get her.”
“That’s it, I’m callin’ the sheriff,” Shirley snorted as she picked up the phone. “You ever wonder why we got a fence around this place? That’s why.”
After two or three minutes, the guy got the message that no one was going to open the gate for him. As they watched on the monitor, he turned away to get in his car. He started it up, and backed it across the parking lot toward the highway. “Uh, oh, I don’t think he’s leavin’. Clay!” Shirley said, reaching for a red button on her desk and punching it three times; three loud buzzer sounds were heard throughout the building.
Before anyone could do anything, the guy pointed the car at the gate and stomped it. In seconds it roared across the parking lot and crashed into the gate, which was somewhat narrower than the car. He broke through, but the car was stuck between the gateposts, just far enough in that he couldn’t get the door open.
Clay raced out the front door again, and George followed, still carrying the pistol and slamming the door behind him. “Don’t worry, the door’s steel, he can’t get through,” Shirley said, but pulled a smaller pistol from the desk drawer just for safety’s sake. “But everybody clear the hell away from the door.”
All the eyes in the lounge stayed glued to the TV monitor, watching as the guy struggled to get out of the car. Clay hopped up on what there was of the hood, scrambled up over it, and reached down to grab him and yank him out where he could get a clear shot at him. In seconds, he was out of the car, back up against it, and getting seriously punched out. In seconds more, they could see Gus, the bartender, come storming around the building from the service gate by the kitchen with a baseball bat in his hand. The backup wasn’t really necessary; Clay was pummeling the guy into a bloody mess.
He was still beating on him when the sheriff arrived a few minutes later. Over the monitor, they heard Clay say to the deputy, “Just subduin’ him a little, officer.”
“Haul his ass off,” they heard George order. “I’ll press charges on everything I can think of.”
In seconds, several hands were helping the sheriff stuff the guy into the back of the patrol car.
“Well, that perked up a slow morning,” Shirley smiled as the patrol car pulled away. “It’s good you people can get a taste of what a Saturday night used to be like up at Maybelle’s in Ely back in the good old days.”
“Shirley, the gate’s busted all to hell,” George said as he came back inside a couple of minutes later, “but from what I can see the hinges held. We’ll have to get Gus’s brother to bring his wrecker to get the car out of there, but he should be able to hang the spare gate.”
“You have a spare gate?” one of the girls standing around said incredulously.
“First time that’s happened here,” Shirley said. “But it ain’t the first time I’ve seen it happen, so we had it designed to break away if it got hit too hard.”
“It’s also the last damn time it’s going to happen here,” George snorted. “I think I’m going to have some steel posts set in the pavement out in front of it. The hell of it was, the food service people were unloading their truck and the service gate was sitting wide open. Well, there ain’t no accounting for assholes, I guess. Now, what’s the deal on the gal he brought with him?”
“I don’t know,” Shirley shrugged. “Cookie went to get Betty Boop, but I was more interested in what was happening out here. I guess we’d better go back and see.”
Jennifer, Norma, and George followed Shirley back to her office, which was located right off the lounge in the front part of the building. It was not a large room, and from the doorway they could see Cookie watching Betty Boop examine a small, slender bleached blonde who was lying on the couch. She was a mass of cuts and bruises, crying and hysterical, not making a lot of sense. About the only thing they could make out clearly was “Don’t let him hurt me anymore.”
“Jesus,” Norma whispered. “It looks like that idiot worked her over pretty bad.”
“How is she?” Shirley asked.
“She’ll live. I’ve seen worse.” Betty replied. She was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt she’d obviously just thrown on, not looking much like the cartoon character she tried to emulate when she was working at the Redlite. There was no trace of a “Boop-boop-de-boop,” or a giggly, giddy flapper persona that for some reason went over well with a lot of customers. Both Jennifer and Norma knew it was strictly a put-on, a way for her to cover up the fact that in her real life she was an emergency room doctor moonlighting to help pay off a huge student loan debt. She turned back to the battered young woman and said soothingly, “Don’t worry. You’re safe now. We won’t let him get to you.”
“He’ll come for me, I know he will!” the girl protested hysterically, and broke back into sobs, huddling up against Betty for comfort even though it obviously hurt her to do it.
“You’re all right now,” Betty told her. She looked up at Shirley and the group standing in the door and said, “Along with everything else, she’s flying on something, but Lord knows what. Maybe several somethings. All I’ve been able to get out of her is ‘stuff.’ I’d be tempted to give her some kind of tranquilizer, but there’s no way of knowing how it would react to what’s already in her system.”
“Well, shit,” George shook his head. “Any idea of how old she is?”
“She didn’t have any kind of paperwork or ID,” Shirley replied. “Maybe it’s still in that idiot’s car.”
“I’ll tell Clay to go take a look,” George said, then dropped his voice and added so that only Jennifer and Norma could hear. “But I’d bet good money she’s not eighteen yet.”
Jennifer took another look at the girl. She was wearing a torn and battered short blue dress, so thin that it was obvious that she wasn’t wearing anything under it. In the condition she was in her age was hard to tell, but it seemed likely to Jennifer George was right. If she wasn’t of age, that could complicate things tremendously.
“What’s your name, honey?” Betty asked in a soothing voice.
“Des . . . Des . . . Desiree is what he called me,” the girl sobbed.
“Is that your real name?”
“No . . . I’m Robin.”
“All right, Robin. You aren’t that other name any more,” Betty said softly. “You’re safe now, and we’re not going to let you get hurt any more. Can you tell me how old you are?”
“Eight . . . teen is what Lonnie told me to say if anyone asked.”
“How old are you really?”
“I’m seven . . . teen.”
“All right, Robin,” Betty said. “I want you to lie back down on the couch here and I’ll examine you a little more carefully.” She turned to Cookie and went on, “There’s a red plastic medical kit in my room. It looks like a toolbox. Could you go get it please?”
“Right away,” Cookie said as she headed for the door.
George, Jennifer, and the others stood back to let her pass, and Norma headed into the office and bent down to talk to the girl.
“Robin, my name is Norma,” she said soothingly. “I’m going to talk to you so maybe you won’t notice Betty taking care of you as much. I’m here to help you, and we’re not going to let Lonnie hurt you any more. Is that all right?”
“Please. Get . . . get me away from him.”
“You’re away from him now and there’s no way you’ll have to go with him again. He’s on his way to jail right now.”
“He’ll get out and he’ll come for me,” she replied hysterically. “I don’t want to have to go with him again.”
“We’ll see that you don’t have to go with him again,” Norma promised. “You have to believe me, Robin. You’re safe now. You won’t have to see him again. Now Robin, where are you from?”
“I . . . we were in Burbank before he took me away from there.”
“Is that where your parents live?”
The girl erupted into a mass of hysteria. “No! Not my parents!” she cried. “They were the ones who made me go with him . . . after . . . after . . .”
“Calm down,” Norma said, trying to settle the girl down, but there was a babble of words flowing from her that didn’t make much sense. It took several minutes before she was back under control a little. She could be hysterical one minute, fighting mad the next, and collapsed into tears a minute later. The drugs in her system had to have something to do with all of that, or at least so Jennifer thought.
“Robin,” Norma asked once the girl had calmed down a bit. ““I’m going to ask you something that may upset you a little, and if you don’t want to answer right now it’s all right, but do you know why Lonnie brought you here?”
“He said . . . he said I was going to make a lot of money for him. By, uh, doing men like he’d had me doing where we were at.”
“Did he have you doing men a lot?”
“Whenever he could. Sometimes it hurt a lot.”
“Did Lonnie have sex with you?”
“Yeah. Lots. Whether . . . whether I wanted to or not.”
“Oh, boy,” George whispered. “This is just getting worse and worse.”
“No shit,” Jennifer agreed in a whisper, thinking that this must have been a lot like Nanci must have been when she made her escape from her pimp in Chicago – except that Nanci had a car and a place to run to, where Robin had neither. There was no doubt this was the dirty side of the business. In all the years she’d spent as a house prostitute she’d never been exposed to anything like this. She’d known it was there and had been told about it, but knowing it and seeing it were two different things.
It took more than an hour before Norma and Betty had Robin wound down enough for her to just lie down and rest. They left Cookie with the girl just in case, while George gathered Shirley, Norma, Jennifer, and Betty in another room off the lounge. “So, Betty,” he asked as soon as they were alone, “what’s the deal on her?”
“Let’s face it, Lonnie beat the living shit out of her,” Betty replied. “But he knew how to be painful doing it without breaking anything. She has bruises, lacerations, and abrasions all over her body. She’s extremely paranoid, you saw that, and probably whatever she’s flying on has something to do with it. I’d guess meth, but there could be something else too. The odds are she has STDs, as well, but no idea if or what. Realistically, we ought to call an ambulance and get her to the ER in Vegas, but I don’t know if we should do that or not.”
“Why’s that?” George asked.
“She’s underage, or at least she says she is, and I understand that Clay didn’t find any ID at all in the car. As soon as she showed up in an ER, we’d have to contact the children’s service agency. The first thing they’re going to do is try to get her back with her parents, and they seem to be the ones who got her into this mess with Lonnie in the first place.”
“Yeah,” George agreed. “A couple times there I was thinking that if I knew a hit squad looking for practice I could tell them where they could get it.”
“I had some thoughts like that myself, but I don’t know of one, either,” Betty shook her head. “I mean, I suppose we could block a children’s service agency sticking their noses in, but it would take time and it would be a tossup whether we could manage it or not.”
“It’s too bad it’s not a year from now and too bad we’re not in Phoenix,” Norma shrugged. “By then we ought to have Hearts of Gold up and running. One of the things we want to do is to have a refuge house, and have it set up with the authorities to be able to take in underage kids. But we don’t have it yet, and this isn’t Phoenix.”
“It’s a shame,” Shirley nodded. “I know that’s what you’re trying to do, and this is a real good example of the problems you’ll be facing.”
“Well, we can’t keep her here, and that’s that,” George said flatly. “There are a number of good reasons and some bad ones, but that’s what it comes down to.”
“Look, Betty,” Jennifer put in. “Medically speaking, is there some reason she absolutely has to go to an emergency room?”
“Well, it would be for the best,” Betty shrugged. “Like I said, there’s nothing broken, but she hurts a lot and the drugs have to wash out of her system. It could be days before that happens, and there’s no telling what the aftereffects might be. I didn’t see any tracks that would indicate heroin or other injectables, but there are other things that cause withdrawal problems. There’s just no way of knowing. On top of that, it seems likely that she has one or more STDs, and they could test for them and treat them.”
“So we could get away with taking her someplace else?”
“Considering the problems she could run into by taking her to a hospital, it would probably work and might even be for the best. At least there wouldn’t be some official asshole throwing their weight around and asking awkward questions. She looks like hell right now, but she’ll heal with some simple nursing care. It would be best if she could be away from men for a while. There’s a risk of some man reminding her of Lonnie until she pulls herself together. Someone would have to stay with her, especially someone who could support her if she has drug withdrawal problems.”
“You could do that, couldn’t you, Norma?”
“Probably, so long as it doesn’t involve other drugs or maintenance. It would give me a chance to work with her once she’s calmed down and can see that she’s safe. That’s the big reason I want to set up a place for a retreat.”
“All right, that settles it,” Jennifer said. “We’ll take her home.”
