Brian Freeman - Stripped

Leo Rucci. Hovering stage right, like a wolf. Blake could feel his hunger, too, in the way he eyed the girls. A man with a neck like a redwood tree. He had been the one to strip Blake out of Amira’s arms.

He began to feel as if he knew them all. As if he could crawl through the screen and find himself in the showroom, smelling perfume, brilliantine, and smoke. As if he could mingle with them, wearing a tux that made him stand a little straighter and strut a little cooler than the rest. As if he could swoop Amira off the stage and drive with her into the desert in a Coronet convertible, her raven hair flying in the wind. As if the whole world were a black-and-white movie.

The more he buried himself in the past, the easier it was to map out the game in the present. There was a bonus, too. David Kamen was in town, the marksman from Kabul who had his fingers in every black market in the Afghan theater. Blake had done plenty of wet work for Kamen, and the man owed him. Soon, Blake had a job that gave him access to the very people he wanted to reach out and touch.

Piece by piece, it all fell into place.

The night before he went to Reno, he sat in the dark, watching the film of Flame again. He kept the dentist’s teeth, his lucky charms, in a box on top of the television, but he took them out and juggled them in his hand as he watched. He was restless and anxious to get started. As he watched the film, he thought about himself, a baby, already in the vicious hands of Bonnie Burton while Amira was onstage. Blake didn’t feel any anger now. The next day, he would begin to even the scales.

He knew he wouldn’t sleep that night. His nerves were on edge, and he needed to calm them, to deaden himself for what lay ahead. The long drive to Reno. The few seconds of violence at Alice Ford’s home. He left his apartment and went out for a drink and a smoke at a club he had already visited several times before. The Limelight.

It was hard to believe, weeks later, that the game was almost over.

He sat in his car, a nondescript brown sedan, in a parking lot one block north of a popular strip club near the Stratosphere. It was night, but neon lit up the street. He could see the other car, the convertible, in his rearview mirror, parked behind the club. Ninety minutes had passed, and Blake figured it wouldn’t be long before the man would reemerge. He kept a close eye on the customers who came and went.

His window was open. He was smoking. Every few minutes a hooker drifted by, leaned her tits into the car, and tried to pick him up. Blake just blew smoke in her face and stared at her until she backed away, nervous and scared. He wondered if any of them recognized him from the sketch on television. In the shadows of the car, he doubted it. He also didn’t think any of the girls would be rushing to find a cop.

At eleven thirty, the man came out of the club. He was impossible to miss. Young and fat, his belly hanging over his gray slacks. A white shirt and a bright tie loosened so far it dripped between his legs. He was tall, dwarfing a tiny blond girl who clung to his arm. Her assets were squeezed into a pink form-fitting dress. Both of them walked as if they were drunk, but that didn’t stop them from climbing into the convertible.

Blake saw a bodyguard, who had been holding up the wall of the club while the man was inside, take a gander up and down the street. He was inexperienced and stupid and didn’t even pause to study the sedan. Blake could have walked up to the convertible with a crossbow and this guy would have kept chewing his gum.

Blake pulled out of the lot and into the Strip traffic in the right lane. Behind him, he saw the fat man and the blonde peel out in the convertible. The bodyguard climbed into an SUV, but he was slow. Blake let the convertible roar past him, then accelerated and kept them in sight. A minute later, the bodyguard’s truck flew past him, too. Blake stayed a few car lengths back.

They drove past wedding chapels, doughnut shops, bail bondsmen, and psychics who read palms and tarot cards. Traffic was heavy. Hot, dry air blew in through the window as Blake followed the convertible. He figured they were heading for one of the casinos on Fremont Street.

Blake had a wireless Bluetooth device hooked to his ear. He punched in a number on his cell phone, and a few seconds later, he heard a gruff voice answering through the earpiece.

“Yeah?”

“Good evening, Leo,” Blake said.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“This is Blake Wilde. Do you know who I am?”

There was a long stretch of silence.

“Okay, yeah, Boni told me about you,” Leo Rucci said. “So did the cops. You’re the guy who thinks he can bring his mama back to life by running down little boys. So what? I should be scared of you?”

“Yes, you should, Leo.”

“Well, you don’t scare me, you little prick. Why don’t you come over to my house right now and talk to me face to face? You won’t, because you know you won’t walk out of here alive.”

“I just want to know if it was you,” Blake said. He accelerated, closing the distance to the convertible. He passed a limousine and slid back into the right lane. The convertible with the fat man and the blonde was on his left.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You were Boni’s right-hand man in the Sheherezade. I want to know if you were the one who actually killed Amira.”

Rucci laughed. “Some dipstick fan bashed her skull in. Let it go”

“We both know that isn’t what happened,” Blake said.

“Yeah? How do you know that? You were shitting your diapers when it went down,”

“Just tell me if it was you, Leo. If it was you, then this is between us. You and me. No one else.”

“I don’t owe you nothing, fuckhead.”

“Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it” Blake took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m driving beside a white convertible,” he added, eyeing the car next to him. “License plate YA8 371. That’s what your son Gino drives, isn’t it?”

There was silence again, longer and more deadly.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Leo whispered.

The convertible with the fat man and the blonde stopped at a red light just ahead. Blake pulled next to it in the right lane and rolled down his driver’s side window. “Pay attention, Leo,” Blake said into the phone.

Leo’s voice screamed in his ear. “You fucker! Don’t you do this, you fucker!”

The blonde was cuddling up against Gino Rucci’s side. Blake figured her hand was in his lap. In his sideview mirror, he saw the bodyguard in the car behind, lazy and unconcerned.

“Hey, baby,” Blake called out to the blonde. “How much?”

She wheeled around. “Shut up, you creep!”

“Come on, baby, I said, How much?” Blake repeated. “How much is fatso paying you for a hand job? Can’t be worth more than five bucks.”

Sideview mirror. The bodyguard was paying attention now. He was opening the driver’s side door. Blake saw Gino’s beefy arm push the blonde back into the seat. Gino leaned forward, his face black with rage.

“That’s a pretty sorry excuse for a hooker,” Blake told him. “Is she the best you can do, you loser?”

Gino’s cheeks pulsed red. Blood vessels popped like fireworks. “I hope you enjoyed your last walk, creep,” he hissed. “’Cause you ain’t ever going to walk again.”

“You listening, Leo?” Blake murmured into the phone.

Leo screamed, “Amira was a whore! She was a fucking cunt!”

The bodyguard shouldered his way out of his car. Gino was getting up, too, his huge torso lifting off the seat like a hot air balloon. The blonde cowered with her head buried in the leather cushion.

“Want to say good-bye, Leo?” Blake said.