Chapter 18 You In? #2
I pushed the bag into Duane’s hands and said, “Here. Shut up and eat one of those.”
His face got what I suspected was Duane Darin Poole’s version of happy (which was to say, moderately less skeevy) when he queried, “More cupcakes?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed.
“Are they filled like the last ones?”
Yeesh.
“No, I had to make them quick.”
He scowled.
“There’s vanilla bean paste in the frosting,” I told him.
He scurried to open the bag.
Duane handled for now, I turned back to Jinx who was sitting on the couch, still in Shanti’s arms.
“He missed his last regular night,” she sobbed into Shanti’s neck.
“He’ll come back,” Shanti soothed.
Jinx pulled away, crying, “No he won’t! I reminded him I was a whore! Now that he remembers I’m a whore, he’s at home in his mansion with its big pool and view of the mountains wondering why he asked me to live with him in his big mansion with its pool and view of the mountains!”
“He has a mansion?” Joey asked.
“I don’t know!” Jinx exclaimed. “I haven’t been invited to suck his cock at his place!”
Another knock came at the door.
Raye, Shanti, Joey and I exchanged alert glances.
Duane was sitting at the little table by the window, stuffing his face with cupcakes and eyeing the door with trepidation.
Cautiously, Raye crept to the door and looked out the peephole.
She sighed and opened it.
Jinx’s crew, or a few of them, namely Persia, Skyla and Lotus, came charging in.
“Well, shit. I forgot to bring the beer,” Joey muttered.
“I hope you’re talking some sense into that bitch,” Persia declared after Raye shut the door.
She was pointing an electric-blue tipped, very long, very pointed talon Jinx’s way.
Btw: the electric blue matched her wig.
“Like we all don’t have Pretty Woman fantasies,” Lotus bitched Jinx’s way. “And you’re livin’ the fuckin’ fantasy, and what do you do? You blow it!”
At that, Jinx exploded from the bed and butted tits to tits with Lotus, shouting, “Back off, bitch!”
“Bring it, sister,” Lotus invited, butting tits back and upping the ante by going for an earring.
“Girls, girls, calm down or I’m Tasing all of you,” Raye threatened.
“You wouldn’t Tase them,” Skyla scoffed.
“Wanna bet?” Raye asked.
The ladies-of-the-evening crew took a beat to take Raye’s measure.
Then they backed off, and Jinx and Lotus separated, thankfully with Lotus leaving her earring where it was.
“Now, as much as we love you all—” Raye started.
“You love us?” Lotus asked.
“I don’t eat cheeseburgers on the regular with people I don’t care about,” Raye returned.
“You do that to keep the info flowing,” Persia said.
“When was the last time the Angels needed info from you all?” Raye asked.
No one said anything.
“When was the last time we got together for cheeseburgers?” Raye pushed.
It was the week before last. The place we met was a dive and in a not-great neighborhood.
But the burgers were insane.
“You made your point,” Persia said.
“Good, because we don’t have time for this,” Raye snapped. “Duane’s got problems—”
“Who’s Duane?” Lotus queried.
The Angels looked to Duane.
Duane bit off half of what appeared to be another cupcake and ignored us.
“His name is Duane?” Skyla whispered to Lotus.
“Oh my God, we all need to be way better human beings,” Shanti declared.
“Anyway—” Raye tried to regain control of the situation.
She failed.
“You got problems?” Persia asked Duane.
Before he could stop chewing and answer, Skyla added, “What problems?”
“We have it under control—” Raye tried again.
“You do?” Duane asked, chocolate cake crumbles and vanilla frosting bits flying from his mouth.
“You do?” Persia and Lotus asked at the same time, without the food flying.
“We do,” Raye confirmed, even if, truthfully, we didn’t.
Duane lost interest in his cupcake, set it and the box of them he had open on the table (I was right, he was tearing into cupcake two), and asked, “Is Amy all right?”
Eek!
Raye took in a big breath, and I could see she was forming a plan to tackle the entirety of this situation.
Then she formed it.
First, she turned to Jinx. “Do you know where Noah lives?”
Jinx sniffled.
“No, I—” she began.
Raye interrupted her. “Okay. We’ll find out. Then we’re taking your ass there. You’re gonna talk shit out with him. Because you aren’t fooling anybody, you’re into him too. You’re gonna figure that out, take that risk, and we aren’t gonna listen to a single word said against it.”
Jinx immediately said several words against it.
“What if it doesn’t work out?” Jinx asked.
“What if it does?” I asked back.
Jinx bit her very full, very pretty lip.
While she was musing on that, Raye announced, “Now, we need privacy to talk with Duane.”
“The hell you do,” Persia said. “If he’s got problems, we’re in.”
“Who’s fuckin’ with you?” Lotus demanded of Duane. “’Cause you’re a skeeve, but you’re all right.”
“What she means is, you’re our skeeve,” Skyla clarified to try to be more polite, though she didn’t do it very well.
“Nobody can be in on this,” Duane declared. “They’re watching, and I don’t want—”
“Duane,” Raye said softly, “Amy is not being held by bad guys. Amy’s working with the bad guys to make you do whatever it is they’re asking you to do. Amy’s fine. She’s had a recent manicure and is still regularly in contact with her son.”
The room went deathly silent as Duane’s face went slack.
Then something so sad, it was impossible not to internalize it in a way I thought I’d be sad until my dying day, swept over his expression for a nanosecond before it twisted into bitter.
“Guess I shouldn’t be surprised and fuck that bitch,” Duane said before he snatched up his cupcakes and headed for the door.
Raye got in his way, so I joined her there.
“Get out of the way,” he bit.
“Duane—”
“Fuck you too and get out of my way!” he yelled.
“This is what’s going to happen,” Raye said in a lethal voice that scared even me a little bit. It definitely got Duane’s attention. “You’re gonna tell us what they’re asking of you. Then you’re gonna leave this room, still pretending you’re terrified they’ll hurt Amy.”
“Fuck that!” Duane kept yelling.
Raye went on like he didn’t speak.
“You’re going to agree to do what they tell you to do.
You’re going to tell us when that’s going down.
We are then going to make a plan to fuck it every way we can fuck it for them, at the same time communicate that playing with your emotions was not okay, you have friends, friends who will go to the mat to look after you, so if they think you’re open to fuck with, they need to think again. ”
Duane just stared at her as Jinx joined me and Raye.
“Yeah. We gonna fuck them hard,” Jinx stated.
Oh boy.
Persia, Lotus and Skyla came to stand with us.
“Whoever this Amy bitch is, she’s gonna wish she never clapped eyes on you,” Persia stated.
“For sure,” Lotus punctuated that.
Joey and Shanti joined us.
But it was Shanti who said, “You be you. So you’re a skeeve, but you provide a”—she looked around and settled on—“somewhat decent and safe place for these girls to do their business, and you’ve done the Angels some good turns. It’s payback time, my man. And we’re paying you back. You in?”
Duane dedicated the next very long ten seconds to continuing to scowl at us before he said, “They want me to be their bagman.”
“Collecting or delivering?” Persia asked.
“Both, taking something to someone, taking something from that someone to them,” Duane answered.
“You know what it is?” Joey asked.
He shook his head.
“You know who it’s to?” Raye asked.
“I know it can’t be to someone too good, or they’d do it themselves,” Duane said.
Uh…yeah.
“I got no interest in that life,” Duane surprised us by carrying on. “I keep my head down. I keep my shit tight. I work my shift. I go home. I eat. I smoke a little weed. I jack off.”
“TMI,” Shanti muttered.
“I sleep,” Duane continued. “Rinse. Repeat. I don’t want trouble. I don’t want hassle. I don’t want to be known to that world. I just wanna live my life.”
“And that’s what you’re gonna do,” Raye decreed. “Set up the pickup and drop-off.”
“I don’t wanna—” Duane started.
“Duane, you’re not gonna,” Raye told him. “We’re gonna figure something out. But when you set it up, be very clear, when you do the final drop-off, they don’t get it until they hand over Amy.”
“Fuck her,” he bit off.
“Yeah, we’re gonna fuck her,” Raye said. “But you have to play your part. Set it up. But be a good actor. You can’t let on you know they’re playing you, because if you do, they’ll know we’re playing them.”
Duane didn’t say anything or even twitch.
“Duane, we got you,” Raye said softly. “Now, we’ll ask again, are you in?”
Duane continued to stand immobile, before he looked down at the cupcakes in his hands.
He looked back up. “You’re gonna mess her shit up?”
“We’re gonna put the screws to anyone who put the screws to you,” Raye told him.
“Can I watch?” he asked.
Raye shrugged. “Sure.”
He shoved the second half of the cupcake in his mouth, chewed twice, and with a full mouth said, “Okay then. I’m in.”
“Right on,” Persia replied.
But I looked at Shanti.
She looked troubled.
I wasn’t surprised.
All Raye said seemed like a lot of maneuvering, and the Angels might have a knack for this, but we weren’t superheroes.
Then I looked to Raye.
She looked determined.
Neither of them was good.
But in the end, we were Angels.
Somehow, some way, we’d get the job done.