Page 48

Moron! Gurnov thought. I’ve told him over and over the office stays locked!

He shoved that door open—and was greeted by the sight of very large, very brown, and very hairy male buttocks.

He quickly looked around the small dirty office. With minor differences—the very large brown hairy buttocks notwithstanding—he noticed nothing had really changed since a week, if not a month, ago.

It held an old steel safe and a battered wooden desk, the latter’s top strewn with various papers and forms, a couple of matchbox-sized clear plastic packets containing white powder, a black laptop computer, a small box holding used cell phones, and a small digital camera. There were two chairs, one with the seat covered in old newspapers. A dim light came from a lone bare lightbulb hanging overhead from a short length of electrical cord.

The large brown hairy buttocks were thrusting rhythmically with the mechanical moans of a skinny bleached-blonde teenaged girl. She had a young, pretty face, somewhat childlike, and was bent over the wooden desk, her black and white checked skirt hiked up, and a pair of high heels beside her bare feet. Her white shirt was unbuttoned, her tiny breasts pressing on the desktop. She licked at a white powder residue on her index finger.

“What the fuck, Ricky?” Gurnov announced from the open door.

Ricardo Ramírez—a chunky five-foot-eight twenty-seven-year-old Puerto Rican with a pockmarked face—quickly glanced over his shoulder as he continued the thrusts. His dark, hard eyes were glazed.

When he recognized who it was standing in the doorway, he stopped. He slapped the girl’s left buttock.

“Want some of this, man? It’s new.”

Are you kidding me? Gurnov thought.

The teenaged girl jerked her head around. Her hollow eyes were also glazed.

“You done yet, Ricky?” she said, her voice sleepy.

Ramírez shrugged as he looked at the girl, and went back to thrusting.

Gurnov shook his head, more than a little disgusted and annoyed.

He felt the weight of his Sig in his jacket pocket.

I should pistol-whip the bastard—one good whack.

But then I’d have to get the blood off.

He crossed the dirty office to the chair that was stacked with tabloid newspapers. He saw they were old copies of Philly Weekly. He rolled up one, then marched over and smacked Ramírez across the back of his head.

“Knock it off! I have dogs better behaved than you.”

Then Gurnov looked at the girl, who was looking over her shoulder to see what the loud noise had been.

“You,” he ordered, “get the hell out of here!”

The girl then looked at Ramírez, who was backing away, shuffling his feet while reaching down to pull his jeans up from his ankles.

“Do what he says, Summer,” Ramírez said, zipping his pants. “Go on up front. Talk to Ashley. See if any work’s come in for you. Tell her the room in the basement’s open.”

Dazed, Summer stood, dropped her black and white checkered schoolgirl skirt back in place, and tied the front of her shirt in a knot. She grabbed one of the plastic packets of cocaine while working her feet into the high heels, then wobbled on them toward the door.

“And back off the blow, bitch,” Ramírez said, taking the packet from her hand as she went through the door. “You need to start making money tonight to pay your bill!”

Ramírez closed the door.

“Lock that damn thing,” Gurnov snapped. “I tell you that over and over.” Then he added, “Another ‘Summer’? How old is that one?”

“Eighteen,” Ramírez immediately said, grinning at his automatic lie. “She’s good. She’ll earn her keep. She’s already in the hole almost a grand, countin’ her bed and rubbers and shit. Everything. And, yeah, Summer, April, whatever—you know dudes love bitches named that.”

He reached for a black laptop computer on the desk. Its scratched plastic case was covered in liquor advertisement stickers. He opened it and pointed to the screen as it flickered to life.

“Here. Check out her ad I put online today,” Ramírez said, trying to focus on the screen. “She’s a ‘private massage therapist’ with ‘best hands in the business.’ I got really creative.”