Blind side, p.3
Blind Side, page 3
She never really belonged to his crew, not for lack of trying, but he allowed her to hang around the periphery. Ms. Hump was not a member of the Southeast Directions. Hump worked for Beauty Kurtzwilde, a woman she planned to kill as soon as the hole in her gut healed and she could hold a Baretta.
For the past ten years, she’d honed her skills, often surviving on bitter pills coated in revenge and unfettered anger. On the day she was down and didn’t want to get out of bed, two pills, swallowed with a shot of brown liquor, got her up and going. Anger also went well with a nice slice of pie and a cup of hot black coffee; both fed her appetite for vengeance and coated her intestines to hold on to the anger.
She made a point of holding onto the anger so it could be unleashed on Beauty Kurtzwilde when they met again. It was bad enough that the men of the world had no use for a woman other than the obvious. The world became a sadder place when other women had no higher regard for those who were born like them.
Sitting up, or struggling to do so, Lizzie looked at The Doctor, then at Slow. Her lips were moving but her voice was weak. Slow asked her to repeat herself once The Doctor provided a sip of water.
“I need the Archangel,” she said and pointed at her jacket. From the upper left pocket, she extracted a black business card etched with a golden viper. “Call the number. Tell him I’m using the card. I need Yield too.”
She sighed heavily and fell into a deep slumber.
Chapter Three- Edge
Technically, she didn’t belong to him. Elizabeth Perkins was not one of the Archangels Technicians; she belonged to Beauty Kurtzwilde and The Company. Gabriel Neary, the Archangel and overseer of the Directions for the Conclave of Angels, got the position through a fluke, or divine intervention as he liked to think of it. Employed by the CIA, in his job for the Mother Company, he was tasked with keeping an eye on the upper half of Ohio for cults, militias, and organizations planning to do not nice things in the name of patriotism, or worse, the god they worshipped. His job consisted of monitoring cults, militias, and small groups of cells that ensconced themselves in with the Amish communities.
His boss, having learned of a Technician named Lemon, who worked for the Fruits of the Great Lakes as their poisons specialists, got herself in a bit of a pickle, and Gabriel was called in for an assist. Unclear of what he was seeing and unable to relay the information to his boss, the next step required a seat at the table. He didn’t have a plate but a small saucer when he first encountered Oscar Kurtzwilde, the brother of Michael Kurtzwilde, who happened to be the father of Mr. Mann.
Oscar, the sniveling lizard that he was, sought an opportunity to grab a man with Gabriel Neary’s connections to create new identities for the people he worked with and for. It was also how Gabriel formally met The Mann while providing a new identification for the woman Mann brought to his door. He provided the documents for Mann, Shanice, and the boy Rocky, and bided his time for further instructions.
Fast forward not even a year later, and Gabriel had provided the same service, at a cost, to Mr. Stop to create new documents for his wife Judy and give her kid, a little girl named Johnnie, Mr. Stop’s last name. He didn’t care for creating new identities for people, but in both cases, it was not only to save one life but several. The Mother Company was aware of his actions, and he kept watch as instructed.
The third time he had to provide documentation was to his lifelong friend, codename Mr. Yield, and a woman whom his friend had married as an act of protection from bad men, much like Mr. Stop’s wife Judy. His friend, Brody Johnson, had encountered a Technician named Ms. Hump who had scarred him for life with a jagged knife cut down his face. For years, it seemed as if Brody would never be the same, but in caring for the woman Millicent and providing a male figure of quality in the boy’s life, Gabriel saw glimpses of his old friend.
It was then that Gabriel was hit with an idea. Six of the members of the Southeast Crew of the Directions were his, all men he knew, trained, and personally groomed. The four members of the Directions who were indirectly linked to him were Wrong Way, the cleaner; Mr. Mann, the sniper; Mr. Stop, the tracker; and Ms. Hump, the femme fatale. Lizzie wasn’t his in the traditional sense, and he didn’t like her being on the periphery, but she liked him as a human. The lady didn’t like many people and he did care for the lady.
He didn’t like how she worked.
Gabriel didn’t like the idea of a woman using her body to lure men like a siren onto jagged rocks causing their deaths. He truly didn’t like that Ms. Hump enjoyed her work. She set off all sorts of alarms in his head, and when she cut his friend Mr. Yield’s eye, he truly began to dislike her. He felt responsible for Yield.
He brought Brody into the fold by providing a few easy assignments to retrieve a few packages to make some extra dough. The money seemed easy to Brody, who became obsessed with Ms. Hump and nearly lost everything. This was when Gabriel stepped up his game and traded the saucer for a plate and bowl to create his own team of skilled men to get the real work done, not the work Beauty did of taking out competitors of mob bosses and people who could later write tell-all books on political figures.
To him, Beauty’s targets were petty. He wanted to root the evil out at the source. Before doing anything and setting his course, he prayed long and hard, asking for his steps to be ordered. To this day, there were moments of uncertainty about which entity answered the prayer, but then, the pieces began to fall into place.
Mr. Exit, a former Navy Seal, fell into his lap. Exit was a polished man of class and breeding who, when placed in a suit, blended in anywhere. Gabriel made Exit an offer that gave the man purpose. However, being smarter than the average bear and mobster, Exit reported directly to the big man, Michael Kurtzwilde. He too didn’t belong to Gabriel, at least not yet. Exit was sent to him and not given, like Mr. Merge.
Mr. Merge was given to him to guide him into manhood, which he did, and the young man had a natural affinity for chemistry. He reunited Joel Thomas with his grandfather in Arkansas, a place he now called home. Joel, unable to have kids but a natural with younger children based on his experience working with Gabriel at the Summer youth camps with their church, never expected to have a family of his own. Maybe it was meddling, but Gabriel knew of four children who needed a safe place to grow into adulthood. He placed them in Joel’s care.
Gabriel had an affinity for matching those in need with resources. His younger brother, Bleu Neary, flipped houses which often became starter homes for young mothers or families needing a fresh start. Gabriel didn’t know how it all fit together, but he had a way of placing the pieces just right.
He placed the Glitter Man’s daughter, Cady, into the care of Falling Rocks, a man who never really knew what it meant to be loved. When she was a teenager, he rescued Cady Slenecki from a bad situation, not knowing she was the niece of the man he named Mr. Exit, but she needed someone to love her and someone to love. Pairing Cady and Falling Rocks together was the right thing to do.
Pairing off One Way, a man who was never sure of where he fit in life, was also not a difficult task. One Way was a natural loner whom Gabriel also took under his wing and groomed. An accountant by trade, but a master assassin who was soon losing his one tether to the world, One Way would need a grounding force to keep him from going off the rails. He’d come across Nichelle and Jasir from a phone call they made, seeking help once they arrived in Kentucky. The boy looked a lot like he could be One Way’s own son, and One Way just happened to be in the boy and mom’s direct path. All Gabriel had to do was make sure One Way had a reason to stop at the greasy spoon, a place that the Archangel highly recommended for knife sharpening. The rest slipped into place on its own.
What had never fallen into place for Gabriel was Lizzie. She concerned him because she had a sixth sense about bad men. She also concerned him because she ran headfirst into a problem without having a plan or backup as if she had a death wish. The assignment, if it was an assignment from Beauty that he knew nothing about, was also a concern.
Traffic on the mountainside in Blairsville Georgia went from a million dollar a quarter operation to almost nothing. This he knew would cause a blowback. Ms. Hump also made it her personal side mission to shut down as many human trafficking rings surrounding children as she could.
Beauty Kurtzwilde was a woman who knew to keep her enemies close. The real concern was if she considered Ms. Hump to be a friend or a foe. As the days morphed into weeks, it was never certain who was the enemy.
Ms. Hump found out the hard way.
TUESDAY, JULY 5 LAKE Sherwood, West Virginia
It was the day after the Fourth of July, and Lizzie Perkins had plans to spend the day at Lake Sherwood, which was walking distance from her cabin in West Virginia. She didn’t want to work. She didn’t want to see another slobbering, beer-bellied white man with a Dicky Doo aimed at her face. Moreover, she wasn’t in the mood to kill anyone.
Lately, the desire to kill had become less and less of a rush than before. After spending time with One Way and Exit’s families and seeing Falling Rocks settle down, she had begun to long for a little family of her own. She wanted to hang up her slicing knives, put away the lace undies and slip on a pair of cotton bloomers from Walmart and make a peach pie to go with her really tasty meatloaf recipe. The idea of doing homework or sharing a cup of cocoa with a cute little girl while talking about two misogynistic bears, and a Mama Bear afraid to speak out against her man by denying a lost traveler room and board in the woods would be right up her alley.
A similar conversation had started with Mr. Exit’s daughter at One Way’s home about a book Hump had read as a child. Exit’s daughter Karli was reading the same book, and an hour was lost in discussing the perils of childhood in a very adult world. Karli understood the story in a way Hump had never seen in a child, which started a bonding between them. Somehow or other, the child ended up with her phone number and called Ms. Hump weekly to discuss the latest book she was reading.
“Karli, you can’t just call me as if we are having a private book club. I am a grown woman and I’m busy,” she tried to argue.
“You are my Aunt, and if you don’t have time for me, I understand. I’m only asking for a little bit of love,” Karli told her.
The child was creepy, a sneaky kind of creepy that slipped into bed with you at night, snuggling up against you to keep you warm when you didn’t even realize you were about to freeze to death. She liked the girl and soon found her heart opening to the child. The sad part was, and she would never admit it to anyone, she looked forward to the weekly calls. It gave her life a sense of order as if there was one person in the world who cared that she existed.
It was Tuesday. Karli called every Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 to say hi, share what she was reading, or to solicit over the phone hugs and love. At 4:15, Hump’s phone rang, and it wasn’t the operator but Beauty herself.
“Time to go to work,” Beauty said.
“Beauty, I might have to pass on this one; I feel off my game,” Lizzie said.
“You’re never off your game and I need you on the road in an hour,” Beauty said. “Charleston, West Virginia. You’re the closest. We have a lead on the collector, but there is a party happening with teen girls. I need the players to stop the game.”
Lizzie hung up the phone and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. That was her first warning to take this one a lot slower than normal. The gear she customarily traveled with was packed and by the door. Her slinky black dress, high-heeled shoes, silk stockings with the seam up the back of the leg, and blood red lipstick, along with her trademark black hat were ready to go. She, however, was not.
Lizzie stared at her phone, hoping another phone call would come in before she left. As if her prayers were finally heard, it rang. It was him.
“Hey, you,” she said in the line.
“Hey back,” the voice said. “I understand you’ll be in Kentucky soon. Any chance a poor doctor working on contract could take you to dinner and a discounted movie?”
“A discounted movie? Man, don’t you have a streaming service?” she asked, finding herself laughing at his old-fashioned approach.
“I wanted to take you out to a movie, so you’d know that I wasn’t inviting you over to stream and chill,” Dr. Elden Thomas said. “In young folks talk, that means something else. I truly want to see this new movie; it is a thriller. I was thinking we could maybe get ice cream after?”
“Oh, you’re serious?” she said, sounding shocked.
“Too dull for an exciting woman like you?”
“It sounds absolutely perfect,” she said honestly.
“Then, can we say it’s a date?”
“For when?”
“This Saturday, Louisville,” The Doctor said. “You tell me where to meet you, or I can pick you up, or you can meet me at the restaurant. I’m in the mood for ribs.”
Lizzie held the line. It had been so long since she’d been on an actual date to have dinner at anything other than a Michelin Star rated eatery. A red basket filled with soggy fries and saturated pork bones sounded like a bit of heaven.
“Saturday, Louisville it is; I shall be in touch,” she told him.
“Elizabeth,” he said in the line, “be safe. It took a lot of courage for me to ask you out. Come back to Louisville. I want to ask you to come back or come home to me, but it’s too soon. I don’t want to scare you off.”
She smiled, something she rarely did. “I don’t scare easily, Doc. I’ll see you on Saturday.”
Her good mood lasted the entire two hour and forty-eight-minute drive from Lake Sherwood to Charleston. Her mind traveled back to her weekly call with Karli Hoyt, discussing another book she re-read as an adult noticing the shift in her understanding of the contexts from when she read it as a child, which also left her smiling. The smile faded as she checked into her hotel, changed for work, and headed to the Jasmine Oaks Country Club in search of a private party.
The clock struck nine as she made her way to the back door, slipping in through the kitchen and coming to a back room where she heard whimpers and cries. Her hand was on the door handle reaching for it when a deep voice spoke her name.
“Lizzie Perkins, we’ve been expecting you,” the voice said, and she turned to come face to face with a smell, a scent she hadn’t smelled in years. Her knees wobbled as the scent took her back in her memories. It took her back to a dark time. The smell took her back to a dark hole that she’d long since buried.
A new fear arose.
Someone knew that smell would shut down her brain and it was working. Ms. Hump had been taken out of play. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, the rules of the game were changed. She was no longer in command of the board. Lizzie was now a pawn.
THE SCENT OF THE BOY permeated their noses as he came around the corner. He appeared small for his age, his arms gangly and his hair in need of washing and possibly delousing. The smell of him was too much for The Doctor. The clothing the child wore, which may have been white at one point, was now brown, streaked with dirt, covered in grime, and possibly human excrement. He appeared to be no more than four or five years old.
“Como te llama,” The Doctor asked the child.
“Miguelito Ramos,” the boy said, looking up at him. Fear filled his small eyes as The Doctor kept his distance.
“Welcome, little Miguel. Do you speak English?”
“Yes,” the boy said, his eyes going to the room and looking at Lizzie on the bed. He pointed at her. Tears welled in his eyes as a vision of what he saw flashed before his small eyes.
“She’s fine, Miguel. The lady is resting,” The Doctor said as he looked up at Slow, who always was peering into the room. “I can imagine you’re hungry, but first, you need a good bath and some fresh clothes. We may have to make do for now, and tomorrow I’ll go and get a few new items for you. Will that work?”
“Yes,” the boy said, looking about the house. “She lives here?”
“No, the nice man over there, lives here. I am a doctor, and he is a crazy man, but he can be nice when he wants to be,” The Doctor said, looking at Slow.
“Crazy man?” the boy repeated, his eyes wide. He bolted to The Doctor’s side and hid behind his leg. His little body shuddered when he peered out at Slow, who was now frowning at The Doctor.
“Real brilliant there, Asshat,” Slow said, heading to the bathroom.
He’d expected Lizzie a day or so earlier and was grateful he’d taken the time to clean the bathroom. The tub, usually with a ring around the base loaded with his dead skin cells, shone brightly, ready for a small body to be immersed in water. Adding the plug to the drain, he began to fill the tub with warm water. For good measure, he went to the laundry room to grab the bleach, adding a capful to the water. He looked at the boy, thinking better of it, and added two. On his way to return the bleach, he stopped in the kitchen to pick up the bottle of thick blue dish detergent planning to add a squeeze to the water. The Doctor looked at him with questions.
“Hey, if this stuff will take crude oil out the feathers of ducks, it can possibly remove some of the icky on his little dicky,” Slow said, pointing at the tub.
The Doctor responded, “one or the other. The combination of bleach and dish soap can be harmful to your health.”
The child, shy, and hesitant to remove his clothing, stared at the two men. Slow sighed deeply, thinking of all the horrible scenarios the child had witnessed or been included in since departing Central America. He tapped The Doctor on the shoulder to give the boy some privacy.
The bathroom door remained open as they heard the small body slip into the water. Slow returned to the bathroom, turned off the faucets, and passed the child a cloth, telling him to drape it over his lap. He used a small bowl to rinse the head full of dark hair. Slow added shampoo, washed, rinsed, and did it again for good measure.
