Seventy-Seven
ROOF STILL CAN’T even keep the girls’ names straight, at least not all of them.
The only thing he knows for sure is that the last four taken have all been blondes. Almost like the big Russian had ordered them up on his own dating app. As usual, they’re being shipped out in a group of four.
The one that’s been waiting longest to make the trip is Holly Ridenour. Leamon’s daughter.
Her name, Roof knows.
Pretty little thing. And a firecracker for a girl who just turned sixteen. If her daddy knew the things she could do, even after you got her settled down, it might kill him worse than his little girl being gone.
He and Lynyrd have kept souvenirs from all of them, partly for insurance. Mostly jewelry they were wearing when they brought them to the cabin. Lockets and necklaces and rings and charms. Like that. It had been a charm bracelet of Holly Ridenour that Roof had kept.
They keep them under control with the drugs.
What was the word Nicky Petrov, the Russian’s point man, had used to describe it?
Compliant. The drugs kept them compliant until it was time to go.
And kept them just hooked enough, especially after the first couple of girls, once they got them up here to the farmhouse, tried to make a run for it when the guards got careless.
Not too high, not too low.
Roof thought it took too much of the fun out of fooling around.
But a job was a job, the best he and Lynyrd had ever had when the pay wasn’t coming from their father.
They can see how impatient Petrov is to get going once they’re past Harv and Mo and inside the cabin. Petrov is dark-complected, looking more like a greaser than a Russian if you asked Roof, wearing his usual dark suit and those pointy shoes he favored and smelling like a whorehouse.
Which, in a way, this is.
“You’re late,” Nicky Petrov says.
“By a few minutes, give me a break.”
“I need to get out of here and get to the plane. He changed his mind and wants them there tonight,” Petrov says.
“Where’s our money?” Roof says, getting to it.
Petrov always has one guard inside the farmhouse, in addition to his outside guys.
The one working tonight is a guy named Ahmad, a Black guy who Roof knows by now used to play some football for Tulane when he had a different name, before he did that Muslim deal so many of them do these days.
Roof wonders sometimes how Allah feels about him being a part of a deal like this, buying and selling young girls this way, almost like the rich guy in New Orleans gets them on one-day delivery with Prime.
Petrov nods at a briefcase sitting on a table in a corner of the front room, near the door to the bedroom.
Roof walks over, opens it, sees the cash, closes it back up.
Petrov says, “Aren’t you going to count it?”
“No need.”
“Then our business is concluded.”
“Just remember,” Roof says, grinning at him, “we have a strict no-return policy.”
Petrov looks at him with those mean, dark eyes of his but doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head, almost bored-like.
“Well, as always, nice doing business with you,” Roof says.
All four girls, dressed in white shirts and plaid skirts, the schoolgirl outfits the Russian had made the Crockett boys buy for them, are seated next to each other on a long couch, all of them with their hands folded in their laps. Staring straight ahead. In their usual fog.
Petrov pulls out his phone and jabs at it with his index finger, even looking impatient doing that. A few seconds later Roof hears the helicopter start up.
Roof walks over and kneels in front of Holly Ridenour.
“How about one last kiss before you go?”
When he leans in, she spits in his face, shocking him. She’d looked as out of it as the girls sitting next to her.
“You little bitch,” he says, and starts to give her a good slap until Ahmad grabs his hand and jerks it back so hard Roof is worried he’s pulled his damn arm out of its socket.
Quietly Ahmad says, “You break it, you own it.”
Petrov tells Ahmad to get the girls into the helicopter, which Roof knows is a Bell big enough to seat six.
When Ahmad and the girls are gone, Petrov turns at the front door.
“You take care of that problem we talked about?” he asks Roof.
“Working on it.”
“Work harder,” he says. “Or the next time that bird takes off, you and your brother might be on it.”
Petrov walks out the door then, leaving it open behind him. The gun guys out front are already gone. Less than five minutes later, Roof and Lynyrd stand on the front porch and watch the lights of the Bell as it lifts into the night sky, banks, and then disappears.
“Have a nice flight, asshole,” Roof says.
He goes back inside to count the money.
All there.