Josh Stallings - Out There Bad

Rolling over slowly, I crawled on all fours over to the bed and hoisted myself up onto it. When I was able to see the room, she was gone and the bathroom door was shut. She had moved as silent as any cat, she dealt out a mean knife, if it wasn’t for her wanting to kill all men, she might just be my type after all.

The worst of the nausea had passed by the time she came out. With the blood gone and lights on, it was clear she was a woman. A thin scar ran from below her left ear to the corner of her lips. Wrapped in a towel it was clear she was missing her right breast. A jagged spider web of scars spread up from the towel and into her neck line. They were all old scars, pale and slightly raised lines of some distant trauma. She had an athlete’s build, all muscle and sinew, if she had an ounce of body fat it wasn’t apparent.

“My clean clothes are in a locker at the train station,” she said.

“And?” I smiled at her stupidly.

“I can’t go like this.”

“True.”

“Do you have anything I can put on?” she said quietly. It was obvious she had difficulty asking for anything, and I wasn’t about to make it easier on her.

“So first you make sure I’ll never be able to have children, and then you want to borrow my clothes? That about right?”

“You locked me in. What did you expect?”

“Not to get my balls kicked in was on the list, thought maybe you’d get a shower and then tell me what your part in this game is.”

“What game?”

“Hide, seek and destroy the Russian mob. Your accent, Russian right?”

“Ukraine.” Her arms were across her chest, and her face was free from emotion. I made a note not to ever play poker with her.

“You want these?” I pulled a pair of chinos and a tee shirt from my duffle. She reached for them but I yanked them back. “No, answers first, then clothes.”

Setting her jaw, she turned and started to pull the dresser from blocking the door. She was clearly willing to walk out into the streets of Ensenada dressed only in a towel rather than be pushed into answering my question.

“Fuck it.” I tossed her the pants and shirt. Without a thank you or even a grunt of gratitude, she slipped into the bathroom and got dressed. Pulling a web belt off her blood stained pants, she cinched up my huge chinos and dropped the razor into her pocket.

“Any chance we can talk like civilized people, without one of us getting cut to shreds?” I asked with a loose smile.

She leaned against the dresser, keeping a good distance between us.

“If I’m such a dirt bag, why am I risking my life to help some little Russian girl I never met?”

“People lie all the time.”

“They sure do. Time to roll the dice and hope I don’t come up snake eyes, or walk out the door.”

She dug a pack of Mexican smokes out of her coat. Striking a kitchen match, she inhaled a lung full of nasty smelling tobacco. Letting the blue gray smoke roll out over her thin lips, she spoke so softly I had to strain to hear her words, “If you betray me. I will kill you.”

“Sounds fair. You going to fill me in on what you’re doing down here?”

“No.”

“Right. Do you have a name?”

“Mikayla.” That was it, no last name. After a few more lame tries, I stopped asking questions that she wouldn’t answer.

I was getting my.45 out of the Scout’s hidden compartment when Peter joined us. His color was back to pink, and he looked more confident. “You’re not coming on this run,” I told him.

“Why, because I freaked when a man got his throat slit on top of me?”

“You weren’t in Afghanistan or Haiti. Are you even a reporter?” I asked. Mikayla watched Peter suspiciously over the hood of the truck.

“You want to see my press credentials? Is this some macho testosterone power play, big man Moses gets to judge who is man enough to go on his little death trip?”

“I don’t roll with liars, or wannabe tough guy cherries. Seen ‘em get too many guys killed.”

“Screw you. Ok, I never was in those places, I lied, big fucking deal. You take me with you and I’ll be fair witness to what goes down. If this shit doesn’t get reported in the States, it will keep going, spreading like a malignant tumor. You shut them down, they’ll open three more safe houses before you cross the border. Am I using you to further my career? Yes, absolutely. But you can use me to put an end to this sleazy deal.”

I was about to tell him to fuck off when Mikayla spoke up, “He comes with us.” I wanted to ask her who made her captain of this party ship, but I realized she was right. What good was saving Nika if ten more took her place? The newspapers might also be our only hope if this shit got wicked back in LA. I hadn’t a clue why the feds were eyeballing me, but I knew the one thing ol’ Unkie Sam was afraid of was bad press.

The streets were jammed with late night party drunk tourists. A toasted little blonde number stumbled out into traffic as we rolled past Papas and Beer, her shirt had come untied in the front and she was flashing more than a little bra.

“Jesus Christ, Judy, maintain!” a boy in Dockers and a polo shirt yelled as he jerked her back, “We are in Mexico, Judy! Maintain!”

The boy’s fear of the foreign made me smile. Back in wonderful LA, we had drive-bys, home invasions and a murder rate that might freak residents of Ensenada. All this preppy boy could see was brown skin and Spanish switchblades. What the fuck, he probably lived in Brentwood and had every reason to fear the unknown.

Breaking free of the traffic jam, we pulled onto Highway 1 and headed out of town. Peter was boldly staring at Mikayla. From the white crust faintly dusting the rim of his nostrils, I suspected his courage was supported by the Bolivian troops marching through his veins.

“You’re the tarot killer, aren’t you?”

Mikayla looked at him, her icy blue eyes bore through his forehead to focus on a spot a hundred yards past the back of his skull.

“Is it true you took out pimps from Tel Aviv to Mexico City to Cancun? Confirm? Deny? What?” The twitchy little fucker was on a coke-fueled roll. “It’s her, right?”

“Keep me the fuck out of this. Two hours ago I thought she was a male psycho killer, now I just think she’s a psycho killer.”

“I know it’s you, I heard you’re called Madre Muerte. Oh, it’s you alright. One story has you coming out of Odessa, it’s all very shadowy, covert, vague rumor mill, some say that the Tel Aviv brothel fire was your doing, any comment? Come on, give me something, anything. Rumor has it, you stood in the street gunning down the pimps and their boys as they ran out of the burning building. What do you say about that?”

“I hate guns,” she said, turning to look out the window.

“I like her, Moses, a sweet mix of psychotic ice queen, and bull-dyke axe murderer.”

“I don’t think she cares two shakes of an ant’s ass whether you like her or not.” Her silence told me I was correct. Ten minutes out of town, we saw signs for Tecate and a small dirt road marker, Calle Ruiz.

A red brown rooster tail of dust spewed from the Scout’s rear tires. Bouncing up and over a small rise, the lights of a lone hacienda glowed from a hilltop ahead of us. No other lights showed in the small valley or up on the hill. I killed the headlights and drove by sheer feel, while my eyes adjusted.

“Are you completely nuts?” Peter asked.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Turn on the lights before you get us killed.”

“You afraid to die, Pete?” We bounced over a deep furrow, Peter let out a high girlish squeak. “You want them to see us coming, have time to get ready, maybe lay out a cheese ball, some punch?”