“Ah!” Leo bucked off the chair as his brachial nerve screamed and scorched his right arm.
“Got a girlfriend?” Andrew asked.
“Did have, two, left me when I went inside, didn’t they. Bitches.” He was breathless.
“Left you or…” Andrew stooped and spoke into his face, his bandana shifting with each word. “Escaped?”
“What? They were whores, both of them.”
“Indeed.” Andrew pointed his finger at Leo’s face, clearly in the mood to rip his head off. “Whores because you’d paid for them, but they hadn’t received any money, had they, no makinga living for them? Some fucking criminal human trafficker got the cash. You. Bought. Them.”
“Yes, they were mine, I bought them. I’ll admit that.” His legs were shaking, his heels tapping up and down on the dirt.
“Women.” I lay his hand flat on his thigh, fingers spread. “Are not possessions to be bought. They are to be cherished, protected, and adored.”
“You see how we think differently now,” Andrew said. “Different neuron connections. We respect and value women, you don’t.”
“I dunno about that, I can’t see your face. Maybe you’re all handsome dudes and don’t have to pay for sex. Fact is, I do.” Globs of spit had formed in the corners of his mouth. “I ain’t exactly James fucking Bond, am I? Don’t pay, don’t get. That’s my life, and who wants to be celibate?”
“We don’t have a problem with prostitution or the blokes who pay for sex and play nicely,” I said. “What we do have a fucking problem with are ass-fucking parties. Having your mates round to take a turn each. Non-fucking-consensual. That’s what we’ve got a serious problem with.”
“How the hell do you know about that?” He twisted and bucked, as though trying to escape. “Let me out of here.”
“No fucking way!” I gripped his wrist and held the pliers to his little finger.
“What? What are you?”
“Before my big mate here starts on your feet, we’ll warm you up with some fingernail removal. Pretty painful from what I hear. Popular in medieval times apparently.”
Andrew rested his hand on my shoulder to make me pause. “So say we wanted some girls for an ass-fucking party, how’d we get them?”
“But…but you don’t want them, not from what you just said.” He was staring at the pliers.
“Use your imagination, say we did,” Andrew went on. “How’d we go about it?”
“Well, you have to call the guy, don’t you. Order them. You can ask for skinny or fat, but he mainly has skinny.”
“Good to know,” Andrew said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “So say I have his number, ’cause I’m sure I’ll find it on your phone. What do I have to say?”
“I dunno what you mean?”
“Code word, asshole,” I said. “There must be one for this type of deal.” I’d seen it before, on the job. No high money exchange would happen without one, from order to delivery.
“There isn’t one.” The smug set of his jaw told me he was lying and trying to protect himself.
“Don’t worry about your contact coming after you for grassing,” I said, clamping the pliers onto the end of his dirty fingernail. “The trick to staying alive is to deal with the here and now, the present, and that, asshole, is us. We are your clear and present danger.”
“What? Just let me fucking go. I’ve got nothing to tell you.”
“Sure about that?” I asked.
“Yes, you cunt, I’m sure.”
I yanked out his fingernail. It was surprisingly easy, hardly any resistance, and with it came a trickle of scarlet blood and a large scream from Leo.
“Shut him up,” Andrew barked at Finn.
Finn thumped him in the sternum, taking the wind from Leo’s lungs. It shut him up.
