Forgive Me(49)

“Hey, I don’t care how badly you stink, Ange. You’ll always be beautiful to me.”

Angie made a smile Mike couldn’t see. “You sure do know how to charm ’em. I’ll give you that, Mike Webb.”

An hour passed and nothing happened. Fedora Hat and Markovich hadn’t reappeared. Neither had the two Tweedles in business suits.

Angie was getting restless. She called Mike. “I need to stretch my legs.”

“I need to learn how to aim better when peeing into a travel mug.”

“TMI, Mike. TMI.”

“What does stretch really mean?”

Angie knew that Mike knew what she was really about to do. “I’ll be careful.”

“I’m going with you.”

“No, you watch the front of the apartment in case Nadine comes out.”

“You know what I’ve watched? A lot of cop shows, that’s what. And the partner-separating thing is never a good idea. You know what else? Forget cop shows. You might as well have a red shirt on.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a Star Trek thing, from the original series. The Red Shirts always get killed. It’s kind of a running joke throughout the series.”

Angie frowned. “A, I’m not laughing. B, I’m a lot younger than you and I’ve never watched any old Star Trek episodes, sorry to offend your inner geek again. And C, I’m just going to do some poking around. I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, sure. That’s what every Red Shirt says.”





CHAPTER 25



Exhibit D: Excerpts from the journal of Nadine Jessup, pages 39-43


Here’s what I know about this life of mine. It’s big business. There’s no supply and demand problem. None at all. I learned about supply and demand in my economics class. It’s funny to think about economics while I’m here, doing this, this effed-up life of mine. School seems like something that happened to me a million years ago. This journal is my classroom now. It’s where I can be Nadine again. You can learn by observation. Mrs. Lockard taught me that in eighth grade science. So I’m observing myself, learning about me. But deep down I know Nadine is dead. Jessie Barlow took her place and went from being a future starlet to a present day slut. Harsh words, but I am what I am. I do what I do. I screw guys for money. I don’t think this business (yeah, it is what it is) could exist without the Internet. The guys answer ads in places like Craigslist and Backpage and there are ways to make sure they aren’t cops. I don’t know what Buggy, Casper, and Ricardo do to make certain, but the only cops I’ve seen here are paying customers.





You can’t let yourself go. You can’t get fat, or too ugly, or too sick. That’s what happened to Jade. Sure she was a little on the heavy side, but not fat, not by a long shot. She was older than us, too. A lot older I think. Maybe her metabolism slowed down or something. Whatever. They cut her food rations anyway. She seemed so weak all the time. Once she fainted in front of me. I begged Ricardo to give her more to eat and he slapped me hard across the face, pinned me to the floor, and put his knees on my chest. I felt like my ribs were going to snap. He told me never to speak to him like that again. I don’t tell him what to do, he tells me, he tells me, HE TELLS ME!! And then he gave me one more slap just to make sure I got the message. Jade got even sicker after that. She was hungry all the time. But when they finally started feeding her again, she started to purge. Imagine that. They gave her an eating disorder. Nobody would sleep with her anymore because she was so weak and her breath stank. They tried to fix it. Tried to get her to eat and stop purging. They put her in the hole, thinking that would do it. Scare her into compliance. It got so hot down there she passed out. I saw them drag her body out. She was limp and drooling, shaking like she was having a seizure or something. They dragged her to another room. I heard Casper call her worthless. I heard Ricardo tell Buggy to deal with it.

I never saw Jade again.





I now know something I didn’t know before. Stephen Macan isn’t Stephen Macan. He’s an * and a liar. It was all a lie. Everything, and that includes Ricardo. Without her being there, Tasha described in perfect detail everything about my first encounter with Stephen Macan. She knew he asked me about a scarf for his daughter, and that he got a phone call from his wife while I was talking to him. Tasha told me he’s done it before. That’s his thing and it was Ricardo who made the call after Stephen signaled him and not his wife. The scarf and the phony wife were made up to make me feel more comfortable. It was all a ploy. I wouldn’t have fallen for a puppy in the back of a van or somebody offering me candy, but I sure fell for that.

Tasha told me Stephen’s real name is Ivan Markovich. He’s a Russian and his nickname is Stinger. We’re his business. He uses guys from the neighborhood, guys like Ricardo, Casper, and Buggy to run his operation. A bunch of Russians coming in and out of this building would attract the wrong kind of attention, Tasha said. I asked Tasha why they call him Stinger and she said, “Isn’t it obvious?” Then I laughed because his nickname suddenly made perfect sense to me. Nothing in my life had ever stung as hard as Ivan Markovich.





I get drugs to numb the pain—weed, booze (booze counts as a drug), cigarettes (those count too) and Oxy (that’s my favorite. Hell, it’s everyone’s favorite). The high is almost indescribable. It’s like you’re in agony every moment of the day and then suddenly no more pain. The drug wears off and then pain comes back, but multiplied, way more intense than before. It’s not a normal kind of physical pain. It’s more like the pain of wanting the drug so badly it physically hurts. It’s like the drug woke up a pain that was always inside me. It was a pain I could feel only when I wasn’t high. I wanted the Oxy to make it go away. Does that make sense? I’m desperate for it and they know it.