Too Wylde Read online

  Lance surveyed his kingdom.

  The Trojan Horse was good.

  Nina Capushek

  Nina stuck her thumb in his eye, gripped his head between her hands, leaned forward and bit the face mask over his nose.

  Growled.

  Her opponent, padded from head to toe, fell backwards and shrieked like a little girl.

  Nina slid into the mount, slammed palm heels into the face place, leaned into her elbow strikes and screamed, "C'mon bitch! Think you're bad? Fuck you, motherfucker!"

  The padded man tried to get a punch into her, couldn't, tried to buck her off, couldn't.

  Nina started to pull his helmet off.

  "Stop! Break! Somebody get this crazy bitch off me!" the padded man shouted.

  The coach ran up, grabbed Nina, got backhanded.

  "Don't touch me!" Nina shouted.

  Two other coaches grabbed her, pulled her off her opponent. She took a deep breath, then another. Relaxed. Let them hold her arms.

  The first coach helped the padded man up.

  The padded man took his helmet off, threw it down. "Hey, fuck this," he said. "I'm not working with that crazy bitch." He stomped away.

  "Come back anytime, sweet meat!" Nina jeered. "You only got a hundred pounds and a suit on me!"

  "Nina," the defensive tactics coach said. "You're gonna hurt somebody."

  Nina shook the hands off her and glared at him. "That's the whole point of this silly bullshit, isn't it? Padded Bitch wouldn't last with me for a short minute on the street. Why the fuck don't you try some of this shit out there? Huh?"

  "Cool --"

  "-- down? Fuck you."

  Nina stalked off out of the gym.

  The coaches looked after her, and then at each other.

  "What you gonna say to her?" one said.

  The lead coach shrugged. "What *can* I say to her? Gee, Nina, you've kicked more ass and killed more men than all of us, but I can't pass you because you kicked our padded man's ass so bad he won't work with you?"

  "I get your point.

  "Fuck you."

  Lizzy Caprica

  Lizzy Caprica sat cross legged on her yoga mat on the polished pine floor. She inhaled a four count through her nostrils, circled the breath round her spine down to her root chakra, from there deep into the earth, held it for a four count, then exhaled, drew in another breath, drawing energy up from Mother Earth to suffuse her body.

  A tone from the Tibetan bowl the teacher stroked. The tone rippled through her, a wave, a breath of air on still waters, movement without and within. And then they began, the entire class in unison, the Gayatri Mantra:

  Om bhur bhuvaha, suvaha

  Tat savitur varenyam

  Bhargo devasya dhimahi

  Dhiyo yonaha prachodyath...

  Three slow soulful repetitions. Infusing herself with the light of the Divine.

  After the class, good byes, and she was off in her black BMW, home to a shower and to bed. Lizzy was a day-sleeper, unless she had company. Her job kept her up late most nights. It was worth it. Between what Lance T paid her and what she earned in tips, she banked mid six-figures yearly for three years now. Debt free and able to do whatever she chose to do.

  She smiled, murmured "Thank you," to the Divine and parked her car in her private slot behind the co-op building she owned a big piece of.

  Stood and let the rising sun fall over her.

  Life was good, in the Light.

  Reni Taylor Meets Mr. Smith

  Reni Taylor liked, as much as you can like a shit job, her early morning shift at the Cheap Cars rental kiosk at Lake City International Airport. She could stay up all night and party, drink some coffee, pop a little meth and a breath mint, show up at 4 a.m. all chipper and happy, which made the poor sad fat fuck who called himself her boss happy, stand around, take long smoke breaks and every once in awhile go through the canned speech written down and taped on the counter:

  Hi, welcome to Cheap Cars, do you have a reservation? If Yes, go to A; if No, go to B.

  Fucking easy, which she liked. She was out of there by noon, home to eat and crash, maybe let Joey fuck her if he was up, then get up and do it all over again.

  She got to see everybody that was too poor to afford an Enterprise, Avis, Hertz, or whatever; Cheap Cars got cheap-ass beat-to-shit cars and didn't give a fuck if you paid for cash, so of course the local narcs and vice and the fucking feds would hang around, try to chat her up, lean on her a little, but she had the "I don't know nothing" hang dog rap down cold, which served her good.

  Reni was working her gum good when this guy stepped up the counter, and when she looked up, she couldn't help herself:

  "Fuck! What happened to you?"

  The man, and she could only tell he was dressed like a man and built like one, had a nearly smooth face, with two eyes peering out of them, a double hole for his nostrils, and a tiny hole where his mouth should have been. His eyes were muddy brown, with a yellow glaze.

  His voice was frighteningly normal. "Afghanistan, baby. Fighting for your right to be a crack whore. I used to be pretty, just like you used to be."

  "Hey, I...."

  "Car."

  "Okay, I'm sorry, sorry...do you have a reservation?"

  "Yep. Smith, right under the part that says read your fucking time line, bitch."

  Reni's heart was pounding. She met a lot of hard guys muling shit for Joey, bikers, gangsters of all types; this fucking guy radiated the kind of vibe that said "I'll cut you up for fun and hang your parts from a Christmas tree."

  Scary fucking bad.

  Her hand was shaking when she handed him the keys. "You're prepaid, Mr...."

  "I know I'm pre-paid. Where is it?"

  "Slot A-49, it's a...."

  "Jeep Cherokee, unlimited mileage, no more than three years old, or else I'll come back here, and you don't want that."

  She swallowed, on the verge of tears. "Yes, sir. That's what it is."

  He reached across the counter, tugged her badge off, held it close to the scar that was his face. "Reni Taylor," he said. He threw it on the counter, then reached over and pinched her nipple through her blouse. "Lousy tits. You better knock off the meth before your teeth fall out. Oh, and Reni?"

  She stood there, her hands at her side, trembling.

  "I was never here, anybody comes asking. I know your name and where you work. Got it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "That's better. Go smoke some crack, you look like hell."

  She stared straight ahead as he walked past her, out into the early morning light breaking over Lake City.

  Deon Oosthuizen

  "Didn't see a thing, oke. We worked it hard," Deon said. He sipped his coffee, grimaced, held it up and called to Thieu, the tiny Vietnamese bartender cleaning up behind the bar. "Another cup, please, beauty?"

  "I make fresh," Thieu said. "Wait."

  Deon set his cup down. "Thank you, beauty." He studied his long time friend and occasional business partner. Jimmy was one of those guys with the gift of appearing normal. Whatever that meant. Just under six feet, fit without making a big deal of it, watchful only in a way that another pro would make. He'd seen Jimmy happy, seen him sad, seen him mad, seen him in combat, seen him in a fight.

  He'd never seen him the way he saw him right now.

  Deon drummed his fingers on the table. "All night. Video and three walkers. Nothing. Nobody since closing that rings any bells. And here we sit in the early light of day...so when you going to tell me who we're looking for."

  Jimmy, haggard with no sleep and too much coffee, stared off into space. "Somebody who's supposed to be dead."

  "You've said that three times. And nothing more?"

  "I need to sleep."

  Thieu set a fresh cup of coffee in a clean mug in front of Deon. "Jimmy? You want?"

  "No," Jimmy said. "Thank you, Thieu."

  She patted him on the shoulder. "I think you go see Lizzy, Jimmy. You need woman now."

&nb
sp; She walked away, her angular ass writing a symphony across the seat of her tight designer jeans.

  Deon tasted his coffee and closed his eyes in appreciation. "Wise woman, that one. I should marry her."

  "Never happen, old man," Thieu said without looking back.

  He grinned. "See? Wise woman."

  "Yeah," Jimmy said. He pushed back from the table. "I'm going to go sleep. I'll call you later."

  "I'll send someone to watch your back."

  Jimmy paused, looked down at the skinny as a rail South African. "Thanks, Deon."

  Deon toasted him with the cup. "It's what friends do."

  He didn't understand the look on Jimmy's face. Or why his friend turned away and walked out without another word.

  It was almost sadness. Or fear, which would be a first in Deon's experience with Jimmy.

  More than anything else it looked like self-loathing.

  Dee Dee Kozak

  It amused Dee Dee to keep Irina on a short leash. It was a nice leash, a custom leather braided one originally manufactured for show dogs. The collar was hand tooled black leather studded with spikes. Very elegant.

  The two women sat at a hotel room table. Morning light came through the open shades. On the table was a pile of neatly banded hundred dollar bills that added up to the tidy sum of $900,000. It was all that remained of Irina's previous occupation as a major arms dealer in the Lake City underworld. Dee had walked Irina out through the epic gun fight that ended her business; and all she had to show for her curtailed contract (she was, after all, one of the best hitters in the business) was a new sub-bitch and a big bag of money.

  After all else was considered, she'd come out ahead in a way she hadn't anticipated. The fighter's gift was improvisation in the fight, and she hadn't risen to her standing in the, well, cut-throat business she was in without the tested ability to improvise and develop the fight to her advantage.

  A nice advantage.

  "You promised me that you would take care of them," Irina said.

  "That was then, this is now," Dee Dee said. "That was before you walked me into a combat zone, and before I took your helpless ass out. You pissed off some dangerous men. They'd probably have cut you into small pieces if I hadn't taken you out of there. You think, sweetheart? I mean, at all? With anything besides your over rated pussy?"

  "Don't talk to me like that."

  Dee Dee smiled her sunny California girl smile, tugged the leash, hard, snapped Irina's head almost into the table. "You don't get to tell me how to talk, Rina."

  Hatred blazed from the Russian woman's eyes.

  "You know you love it," Dee Dee said.

  Irina looked away. "Like I said."

  Dee tapped the stack of cash. "There's this, Rina. Walking away money. I can give you a little piece, drop you at the airport, you want. See how far you can get. Hard for a girl to start over at your age. Don't think you'd get much traction here in lil old Lake City. There's no upside to tackling these boys. Especially just to make you happy, which is not my concern. If you can come up with one good reason why we shouldn't take our money and go our ways instead of tackling some heavy hitters head on, I'll certainly listen." She paused. "Well?"

  Irina took a deep breath and calmed herself. "You want money?"

  "I'm all about the money, honey. But I'm not greedy, and I got a lot of money here."

  "That's my money."

  Dee laughed, a tinkling sound. " You want to take it from me, go ahead." She tugged the leash. "I'll give you a shot."

  "It's not fair."

  Dee laughed hard, a deep genuine belly laugh. "Dang, girl! 'It's not fair.' Nothing in life is. 'It's not fair?' What the fuck?"

  She shook back her damp hair, cut short in an expensive Malibu salon. "So? I'm waiting..."

  "If you want money, there's more."

  "Now you have my attention. Who has the money, how much, and where is it?"

  "I have more. In accounts. Off shore. And there is more money at the old warehouse."

  "How much at the warehouse?"

  "Maybe three hundred thousand."

  "Not worth my ass to walk in there. What about the offshore accounts? You have access? Passwords and numbers? That's a no-brainer, and we don't need to tangle with my South African boy friend and his full-auto buddies."

  "Yes. I have access."

  "Well, just go your way and get your money. I'll drop you where you want to go and I'll keep what I got right there. You can go be someone else's bitch. You're not my type."

  "I will pay you to finish the job."

  Dee Dee sighed. "Honey, listen to me. I've been doing this work a lot longer than you might think. Sometimes it's just not worth it, no matter how much money you throw at the problem. Sometimes it's just best to walk away and call it lesson learned. You got enough money for you to go somewhere and recover your senses. That's your problem. You don't have enough for me to run back into the middle of that hornet's nest and try to swat those troublesome boys. I doubt they're gonna track you down; no offense, but you're no threat to anyone, though your money might be. Those boys are straight up shoot and loot bandits; I doubt they're gonna go all financial forensics on your international bank dealings."

  "I will pay you one million in cash."

  "Baby, I got $900K on the table to walk away."

  "I will pay you an additional one million. In cash."

  "For what?"

  "To kill the South African. And his friend."

  Dee leaned forward. "Rina, baby, I could just kill you and walk away. Or work you in a way you might find pleasant at first, but will get old in a hurry. Till I get that info out of you. Take some advice from a girl friend. Walk the fuck away. Be smart."

  "Two million."

  Dee leaned back. "You have that?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, then," Dee said. "A girl could buy a lot of shoes with two million. But you're going to have to show me the money first."

  "You will kill me."

  "Maybe, baby. But what choice do you have? I could summon up some professional indignation at the loose ends. For two million."

  "I need a secure computer."

  "No such thing, baby. But I can get you onto one a little more secure than your average run of the mill laptop. Let me call a friend of a friend..."

  Mr. Smith

  Mr. Smith drove his Jeep Cherokee around the chain of lakes that defined the center of Lake City, humming his favorite mindless driving tune:

  "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighborhood, won't you be mine, won't you be mine..."

  He had on a snappy fedora, all 40's detective style, pulled down low over his face, and his eyes covered with expensive prescription Oakleys. The collar of his leather jacket was turned up to obscure the white blur of scar that defined his face. He popped a pill, a steroid/pain killer mix custom crafted by a chemist of his acquaintance, rinsed it down with a sip from the bottle of water with the long curly straw.

  He liked those straws; reminded him of his youth.

  Lake City in the morning light: joggers in expensive spandex legging it around the trails, bikers and bladers in their own lane; morning commute traffic into the heart of downtown; early summer time in the Midwest, trees budding, brilliant sunlight gleaming off the blue crystal waters and the windows of the skyscrapers; all in all a lovely example of the quintessential American Midwest city.

  Bullshit.

  He'd been here once before, when he still had a face, and he knew what was just under the surface here. This gleaming little city was one of the top sources for prime Midwestern pussy that got picked up and sold in the Middle East -- any age, any sex, these little blond Norhoogian and Swedeanhovians fetched a pretty penny, especially before they got too fucked up, so to speak. This was a primary transit point in the manufacture of methamphetamine in industrial quantities, since down south was prime agricultural country and provided ample access to the necessary precursor chemicals. Money laundering was big bu
siness as well, this being one of the prime financial centers in the country. And of course you had the whole middle-eastern terror connection, since Lake City was home to the largest concentration of Somalis outside of Mog, as well as to a number of mosques with direct connection to Hamas and Hizbollah and a host of others, not least among them The Base, or Al Qaeda, as the civilians called it. Big time organized crime, especially in the thriving bar and club circuit, where the mob had a finger in the cash flow going back to the Prohibition Days when speakeasies were a prime revenue source because of all the hard-drinking Swedes and Norwegians imported as cheap labor in the mines and mills and foundries of Lake City.

  Nowadays, more money was made in the high-tech offices downtown, or in the converted warehouses, or in the ring suburbs, but there would always be a thriving dark side business in this town. Too much momentum over the years, and even the rich techno-yuppies needed a place to spend their money on a little taste of the naughty and not-nice.

  He followed the main drag, what was the name of it? Couldn't remember, didn't matter. His memory was going to shit along with the rest of him, his body kept functioning by a careful brew of chemicals and occasional treatments since the burn damage that should have killed him wreaked havoc on his body's internal workings as well. He remembered the way down to E Street, and then carefully, clocking the street, drove down and passed Moby Dick's, the most fucked up bar in town, maybe in the whole universe, place of employment of one Jimmy Wylde, known to his old-timey time friends as Jimmy John.

  He drove by, staring straight ahead.

  "Hello, Johnny, how you been, Johnny, it's so good to see you back once again..." he sang softly.

  He drove downtown, clocking the flow of the streets at rush hour, how the downtown streets looped like a bowl of spaghetti, all one-ways that followed the old cart tracks where the 1800-era peddlers had dragged their carts up from the river banks. He drove out into the suburbs again and stopped at an Ace Hardware. Went in.

  The older man behind the counter looked him right in the face. "Help you, sir?"

  No flinch. That was interesting.