Go to the previous Chapter: Pirate’s Folly – Hellhole
Chapter 4
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Hotel Gloria
We wished we could just sail away and let it all sink, but it doesn’t work that way. Lots of shit floats. Most of their boat sank because two-thirds of the front was blown to bits and the rest was taken down by the outboards. There were lots of other floating pieces that would wash up somewhere, however, and we didn’t need that. There were some bloody flotation devices with torsos in them, spongy gloves with hands, other safety gear meant to float. Some gassy internal organs refused to sink. Annabelle was completely drenched in pink fluids and chunks of flesh.
“Where’s a good rain when you need it?” I said, looking up at the blue sky.
“The gods were with us fifteen minutes ago. Do you think they’re sticking around for the cleanup?” said Gerard, who was almost giddy at this point. “We’ll drag a net around here for a bit and pick up what could be a problem. The boat pieces we’ll need to hide and cover them with branches. It doesn’t look like there’s anything too big to handle,” Gerard said.
And that is what we did for the next hour. I hosed off Annabelle while Gerard had Dani steer his Grady White around in circles as he dragged a fish net in the water, picking up boat and body parts and filling his rear deck. Dani drank beer and danced to some music she was streaming on a Bluetooth speaker. Gerard put boat parts on the port side, body parts on the starboard. When they finished skimming the water, he looked at the starboard pile.
“Do you have any crab traps? He asked. “I have two.”
“Yeah, I also have two.”
“Pass them over.”
I did so. Gerard spent the next 20 minutes putting the body parts in crab traps and throwing them overboard.
“The crabs will clean things up, but the bones will be a rude find someday.”
“Ya think?” Dani laughed.
“Bill, you’re going to have to anchor that thing somewhere off the beaten track. It’s been flagged. I think we can find a spot around Duke Island.
That was definitely the right move. We powered down there in tandem and found an inlet that was secluded. I dropped anchor and we gathered our essential belongings. We would have to leave Annabelle there for a while. I did what I could to make sure things were locked up and secured.
“They’ve probably flagged my boat too, but I have a quiet place to tuck into,” said Gerard.
A few hours later we were back in town. Gerard told us to get a room where we could duck out of view until our flight was arranged.
“Maybe the Frost Hotel. I haven’t been there in a while. It was a nice hideout a few years back. You want to go low profile until your flight.” Gerard handed Dani a black baseball cap. “I’ll call you in a little bit and we can talk about the next steps.”
We found a taxi and asked for the Frost Hotel.
“You sure?” were the driver’s first words.
“Yeah.”
The hotel was not on any of the main roads. It didn’t have any signage either, which was strange. It looked more like a nightclub, with velvet curtains drawn over the windows and a heavy black metal door.
We paid the taxi driver and went inside. There, we found a nicely furnished bar with lots of dark velvet furniture in different colors. Lounges and cocktail tables were the theme, like a VIP room in a nightclub. Low music. In the corner opposite the bar was a desk. A beautiful girl in a green satin dress was arranging candles on some tables nearby. When she saw us enter, she went over to the desk. She looked like she couldn’t have been more than 16.
“How did you find out about us,” she asked smiling. She looked really spaced out.
“A friend told us to come here,” I said, trying to be vague, wondering why it mattered.
The girl took a long look at me, top to bottom, then at Dani, then at me again. She smiled.
“You guys are hot. So, a friend?” Another pause. She looked over at a boy behind the bar, not much older than her, and nodded.
“You here to see Jess?” he asked.
“Sure, but we’d like to get to a room and have a bit of a rest first,” said Dani.
I looked at Dani to see what could possibly be going through her head. I supposed she was playing the nightclub VIP trick. You get better service if you know the manager. We were in a pressing situation, however, and needed to just hole up somewhere and not get noticed. We didn’t know these people and had no reason to meet with Jess, whoever that was. I decided to follow Dani’s lead though. What the hell.
The boy nodded.
“Come this way.” No arrangements to be made, no payment. Just follow the boy.
“Aight,” I said coolly. That’s what you do in a nightclub, go along with the invite.
The boy led us down a few hallways with guest rooms on either side. At the end of the second hallway, there was a black upholstered door with buttons on it. He put his hand on the door and gazed back at us as if we were about to be ushered into a secret passage. Dani shot me a surprised look. What to me, was a bizarre and unsettling interaction with these kids, was to Dani, a mysterious and compelling adventure. She watched the boy intently.
“I guess Gerard thought this was the best place to stay hidden?” I whispered to her.
Dani raised an eyebrow and shook her head.
“Can you put your phones in silent mode please,” the boy asked.
We did so. He opened the door and let us pass into a dark hall lit with dim Edison lights. He closed the door behind us and locked it. The hall led to another fork. Down the left hallway, we heard some quiet laughter and water splashing. Was there an indoor hot tub? The boy turned us to the right. We walked about twenty feet, then stopped at our room.
“Here.” The boy held a pair of keys. Dani took it. “This one is for the room, and this one is for the door over there,” he said, pointing toward the black door in the hallway that he locked.
“Thank you. What’s your name?” asked Dani.
“Gilbert.”
“Thanks Gilbert. Can you send someone by for bottle service please?”
“Sure, would you like the full menu?” he asked, with a wink.
“Uh…yeah,” I said out of curiosity. I was pretty sure he didn’t mean food. No harm in seeing what it was.
He nodded and smiled, then left.
The room was small but nicely laid out. A king-sized bed consumed a third of it. At the foot of the bed was a red, plush bench. Beyond that, two wingback chairs sat opposing each other with a glass table in the middle. The velvety Victorian theme prevailed here, too. The night table lamps had red shades. Everything was red, purple, black, or green. There was a huge mirror on one wall, making me think there was somebody on the other side of it, watching. I felt like I was in a seedy Vegas hotel.
“This is really weird,” said Dani. “Why do we need a key to get out that door? It locks from the inside?”
“No idea. Kind of like a VIP experience, I guess. I wonder who Jess is.”
“No. I can see a VIP room having a lock preventing people from getting in, not one stopping them from getting out.”
There was a light knock on the door. Dani opened it. A girl no older than twelve entered the room with a trolley. She had dark hair and eyes. She was dressed in a French maid outfit with fishnet stockings. The trolley had an assortment of bottles on one side. Champagne, vodka, gin, fruit juice, tonic water. On the other side of the tray was an assortment of drugs. Little plastic bags with labels. One had a “C”, another had an “H”. There were different kinds of marijuana and vapes. Dani was stricken.
“How old are you?” she asked, kneeling down toward the girl. The girl stared back without saying anything. “What’s your name?”
“No sé,” the girl said, a blank look on her face.
Dani looked at me.
“Am I imagining this?”
I shook my head. Dani took the girl’s hand and led her to the bed to sit down. She pointed to herself.
“I’m Daniella, that’s William. What is your name?”
“Gloria. You like Gloria?”
Dani nodded. At that moment, the girl began unbuttoning her dress.
“NO, NO, NO!!!” Dani said. “No. I like Gloria.” Dani put her hands together over her chest. “I LOVE Gloria.” She put her arms around Gloria and hugged her. The girl hugged back but seemed to be doing and saying only what she thought we wanted. She was an automaton, emotion long gone from her spirit.
“You want?” Gloria pointed to the tray of odds and ends. Dani grabbed the vodka and juice.
“No.”
Gloria stood gazing at Dani for a moment, mesmerized. Then she exited the room with the trolley and closed the door.
Dani sat down in one of the wingback chairs and stared at the wall for a good 5 minutes. She took several swigs from the bottle. Her hands were trembling. I was also at a loss for words. I grabbed the bottle and took a swig.
“How are we getting pulled into the middle of all of this, Bill? What alternate reality have we stepped into? I can’t believe this. We got dragged into the middle of a trafficking ring. The more we try to get out, the deeper we find ourselves.”
I believe it was at this moment that I lost Dani to a darker force. Her atmosphere changed. She had crossed some line, had become someone else.
“I have a profound…” she struggled for a word, “hatred for people who take things from others, those who force something bad on others. Especially something like this. I don’t believe they deserve to live,” she said coldly. “Call that what you want. Call it crazy. I don’t lose a minute of sleep over sending those eight guys to hell in pieces. In fact, it makes me sleep better.”
I was starting to feel uneasy. I agreed with her, but she was going to a scary place.
“We need to get the authorities involved,” I said. “It’s the best way to take down something of this scale.”
“Fuck the authorities! That’s probably the mayor down the hall in the hot tub with some kids.”
“Look, I’m worried about us getting too tangled up in this, Dani. This is the last thing we need to be dealing with. I don’t want us, you, to end up in a prison somewhere for life.”
“Do you know that less than half of homicide cases get solved in this country? This whole CSI mentalist thing on TV where some agent can read tea leaves and find the perp. It’s complete bullshit. People with half a brain get away with it. I’m not too worried.” She took another draw on the vodka. “Especially here. Bill, I can kill Jess right here on this bed and leave my fingerprints everywhere and the authorities will never see it. Dick and Jane at the front desk, or some cleanup crew, would be brought in to mop up and make it look like nothing happened.”
Someone started whistling in the hallway. Footsteps approached. I was on edge with all of this. There was a knock. Dani smiled. Fuck.
“Hey brother, let me in,” came a voice outside the door.
Dani opened it.
“Jess?” she said.
The man looked thoroughly confused when he saw us.
“Yeah. Uh, sorry, I think I have the wrong room.”
“No, we need to talk to you.”
“Who the fuck are you?” said Jess, getting angry. He was a mean-looking guy, and big. Not someone to mess with.
“We were told to check on you. You can call me Marissa. He’s Rourke,” she said, pointing to me.
“Marissa & Rourke. Who the fuck sent you?” Jess pushed Dani back hard. He was getting ready to throw us down. Dani whipped back and grabbed his shirt with both hands.
“Our fucking boss, asshole! So shut the fuck up and sit down or you’re getting a time-out, if you know what I mean!”
Jess did a double-take on us. His anger fizzled.
“What does he want?”
“He wanted us to do a check-in. All looks good so far, so let’s just get along, okay?”
“Sure.” Jess sat down and took a deep breath. “Oh man, things are getting crazy.”
“How so?” I asked.
“I just heard about the lockdown. They don’t tell me shit. I heard from Nogueda that they’re after Gerard. That dude apparently went rogue. That’s all I was told. I tried calling Simmons to see what’s up but he’s not answering. That’s weird. He always answers. Same with Dillon.” He hunched over and put his head in his hands. “Nogueda said they were going to make the rounds.”
While Gerard’s head was hanging over, Dani picked up her backpack and unzipped it. She pulled out the .45 and grabbed it by the barrel, then brutally pistol-whipped Jess on the back of the head. His face plunged through the glass table to the ground. Stunned, he struggled to get to his feet, bits of glass embedded in his face, but he was disoriented. She hit him again, on the temple this time. He fell back down. The butt end of that .45 was no joke. A few hits like that and it was hard to return. He was tough, though, and grabbed her leg, trying to bite it. She delivered two more swinging blows to his head. After that, Jess was done.
Dani didn’t stop. She whaled on him about ten more times. Bits of his head buckled. An eye popped out and blood pulsed from the socket like wine being dumped from a bottle.
There was a strange cackling in the room next door, behind the mirror, as if some old geezer was getting excited. Dani, exhausted in her furious outburst, looked up at me, almost as if she were drunk. She had blood spray all over her face and arms. She was about to collapse and I rushed to catch her.
“Holy shit! Dani!” I pulled her over to the bed and laid her down. She was trembling in a protracted full-body shiver. “I’ve got you. Everything is okay.”
“What happened?”
I didn’t quite know how to answer, so just held her.
“We’re getting out of here. Just take a minute.”
We had less time than I thought. There was noise in the hallway, male voices. Urgent. I had to get us out of here, but Dani was in no state to go anywhere. I took the .45 and put it in my waistband.
“Are you okay here for a minute? I think we’re in for some trouble.”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. BILL….” Her voice trailed off.
“Don’t worry, we’re getting out of this.”
I opened the door and several kids ran past.
“Donde!?” shouted a gravelly male voice around the corner. A girl shrieked.
“Allí!! Allí!!”
I stepped out.
The steroid man who was shouting orders rounded the corner. His veined arms bulged out unnaturally. He had Gloria’s hair in his hand and he was dragging her through the hall. I saw no firearm, but I knew this could only be temporary. I pulled the .45 out and pointed it at his head.
“Let her go, fucker.” I pulled out as much gangster vibe as I could muster. “Now, or you’re dead.”
The man let go but had a confident look in his eyes. If there is one thing I know for sure, if a bad guy is looking down the barrel of a .45 and he looks confident, he’s not giving up. I could see that. I returned a confident look.
“Back up.”
He did so, stepping back toward the black door. Behind him were three other guys who did have guns. They kept them down, as to not get me firing. Gerard was right. The .45 commands respect. The guy in the front was definitely the leader. Gloria ran off.
“Drop those guns,” I said, “Or there is going to be a hole.”
Two of the guys smiled. That confidence permeated their ranks and I knew these guys were hardened gang members. There was only one thing to do. I fired off a round into the ceiling, showing I meant business. All their heads lined up behind their leader in a reflex to hide behind something.
The injustice of it all. Dani’s words rang in my ear. What right did these lowlifes have to take away other people’s freedom, steal their spirits? That smug smile on their faces.
I pulled the trigger and blew a hole four inches wide in the leader’s head. Two of the other guys behind him dropped. The fourth stood there motionless, quivering. I shot him through the chest. I thought it was over, but then saw the third guy still moving in the blood pool. The first round I shot went through two heads and lodged itself in his forehead. I put another round in his face. Dani, I have to get you out!
I ran back to the room and found that the only person there was Jess, still pumping feebly out of his eye socket.
Dani was gone.
Go to the Next Chapter: Pirate’s Folly – Summer Camp
