Page 23 of Nasty
“Your safety? You’re not at risk,” Fix volleyed back.
“Of course I am! I’m the one people meet with. I’m their first point of contact when something goes wrong. Do you think this Carver guy’s just been sitting happily on the sidelines, waiting for an update? No, he fucking hasn’t. He’s been hounding me day and night. He threatened to show up here two days ago. You havenoidea what I’ve been dealing with.”
Fix’s head hung forward, his chin almost touching his chest. He sighed heavily. “Okay. You’re right. I should have considered that, and I’m sorry. I should have kept you in the loop. Sera and I are going to stay here for a couple of days. We’re going to figure out where to go from here, and how we’re going to proceed. In the meantime, we need to decompress. Why don’t I come by later, and we’ll go through everything then?” It may have been worded as a question but Fix clearly meant it as a statement. He wasn’t going to stand here and be chided by her.
Monica was not happy. “All right. Fine. I’ll go. But bear in mind…this is not like you, Fix. You’re acting completely out of character, and I’m the only one who appears to be concerned by this.”
“Goodbye, Monica.” Fix didn’t look up at her. She remained there, staring at him for a moment. Finally,she huffed, snatching up a black jacket and a purse that was sitting on Fix’s table, and she stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door so hard behind her that the windows rattled.
Fix looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Sorry?”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “It’s fine. But I think you’d better tell me how the hell you two started working together, because honestly? I am so confused right now.”
TEN
HOOKERS AND BLOW DON’T COME CHEAP
SERA
“Monica overstepped. She treated you like shit. Not to mention the fact that she scolded me like a little boy caught playing with his dick. Not gonna fly. I’m going to have to have a serious fucking talk with her.”
I sat down at the table, lacing my fingers together, looking up at Fix expectantly. His nerves were frayed—didn’t seem like he was used to dealing with hysterical women. “How did an ex-priest and a nun fall into this, anyway?” I asked. “Does she have feelings for you or something? Because that? To me? It all looked a little jealous.”
Fix rubbed at his jaw, huffing as he sat down opposite me. “No. She’s not jealous. She’s just…protective. Five years ago, she was attacked in the rectory of my church. I found her. She’d been brutally beaten. Raped.Repeatedly. The man who assaulted her did as he pleased with her, and then, when he was done, he stabbed her over and over again. She should have died. I didn’t think for a second she was going to survive. I held onto her while we waited for the ambulance, and she’d looked up at me, and I’d seen it in her eyes. She’d believed she was going to die, too, and there had been so muchcouragein her eyes. She hadn’t been afraid. Not really. She was in the hospital for a month. Underwent a total of eleven surgeries to repair the damage to her internal organs. She came through each and every one of them fighting. But when she was finally strong enough to leave the hospital, they’d forgotten to repair one final injury. She was broken in her soul. And I guess I was, too. The cops weren’t doing anything. They shelved Monica’s case, because a string of kids had just been kidnapped in Red Hook, so they just closed her file down like she didn’t matter anymore.
“We started looking for the guy. That’s how all this started. And the more we looked, the more fucked up, depraved, shitty, sick people we found. The more broken, traumatized people we found. The more people we found who wanted to hire someone to make things right.”
“So you decided to quit being a priest, because you realized you could make money solving people’s problems?” I’d never suspected the money was a drawing factor to Fix. Not until he’d just spoken those words.
“No. That wasn’t it. One day, a woman came to me. She’d heard I was trying to find criminals, to have them convicted of their crimes. She showed me pictures of her eight-year-old son—what had been done to him. The pictures showed a small child, face-down in an alleyway. He was naked. He’d been raped. His neck had been snapped. The woman had given him five dollars and told him to walk to the shop three doors down from her building to pick up some milk. She’d been cooking, so she hadn’t wanted to step away from the stove. Everything would have burned. Her son was taken right outside and dragged across the street. Three people on the street heard him screaming for his mom, screaming for help, but no one went to him. He’d died alone, terrified and in pain. His mother was planning on killing herself. Something inside me just snapped.”
Fix looked at me steadily, his eyes unblinking, but reliving this memory was affecting him. I could tell. He was filled with a deep, bottomless, fathomless rage. “I told the woman to wait. I told her I wasn’t going to be able to take her pain away, but that I was going to try and ease it some. That night, I went out and I found two people who both said they’d seen the same man with the young boy, dragging him by the collar of his t-shirt across the road. Both of them gave the same name. It waseasyto gather that information, which just made me madder that the cops hadn’t done their jobs properly. I asked around some more, and I figured out where this guy lived.
“When I knocked on his door and asked the man who opened it if he had killed the little boy, he’d spat at my feet and said, yeah, so what if he had? What was a priest going to do about it? I ripped my collar off, and I took out the serrated knife I’d put into my pocket, and I said, ‘I don’t know what a priest could do. ButI’mgoing to make things right.’
“I took that bastard’s balls back to the woman in an old Slurpee cup I found on the floor of his apartment. And I wasn’t sorry for what I’d done. She asked me if he was dead, and I told her he was. She cried. She wept with relief, because, for her, in some small way, it felt like it was over. And then she tried to give me three thousand dollars. I refused to accept it. I quit my position the next day. I walked away, so I could devote myself to finding the man who attacked Monica, but it wasn’t long before people were contacting me, searching for justice. They’d heard rumors about what I’d done and they wanted to pay me for my services. I didn’t take a single one of those jobs, it would have been too dangerous, but it got me to thinking. If people did want to hire me, then why not? Everything I’d believed in was a fucking lie. My life had been a farce. And the cash would come in handy while I was looking for Monica’s attacker.”
I picked at my nail, studying it fiercely, eyes down on the table. “So…you keep the money?”
“Hookers and blow don’t come cheap,” he replied.
There was no resisting a statement like that. I glanced up at him, frowning deeply.“Seriously? That’s what you spend your money on?”
He cocked his head to one side. “What do you think?”
“I think this place must have cost a fortune, and your truck is top of the line, and your money has to come from somewhere.”
Fix huffed lightly down his nose. It kept catching me off guard, and at the most inopportune of moments: the man sitting across the table from me wasreal. He was so utterly dysfunctional, and so unquestionably bad, and so undeniably dangerous, but he was also sexy, and fierce, and loyal, and fuckingfascinating. I didn’t want to keep staring at him like a complete freak, especially given the content of our conversation, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. “My mother came from old money,” he said softly. “They left everything to me when they died. I didn’t want it back then, but when I left the church, I decided it wasn’t doing anyone any good tied up in trusts and funds. So I bought this place outright. And I dip into it here and there whenever I need to.Yes, we do charge the people who hire me, Sera, but I don’t touch a cent of it. Monica handles all of that. She uses it for good.”
I wasn’t happy about how my first meeting with Monica had gone down. She’d been more than a little aggressive and hostile. Downright unpleasant and rude, really. But now, knowing a little more of her story, how she’d been viciously attacked in the most horrific of ways, my anger toward her had dissipated a little. Still, I couldn’t help but ask. “How can you know she’s not lining her pockets with all that money?”
Fix shrugged—a carefree, nonchalant jerk of his left shoulder. “Idon’tknow. But I trust her. And, honestly, it wouldn’t matter if she was skimming the money, or keeping it. She can have it. All I know isIdon’t want it.”
******
I hadn’t paid much attention to the penthouse when Fix and I had entered. I’d been a little more concerned about the crazy woman screaming at us to take in our surroundings, but as Fix moved to the kitchen, saying he was going to make something for us to eat, I allowed myself the time to explore a little. The living space was massive and open plan, with large floor-to-ceiling windows that looked back over toward the bridge we’d crossed earlier, and the steepled columns of countless Lower Manhattan high-rises. The city looked like it had been constructed out of Lego from this distance—so many blocks and bricks, all jumbled together to create something oddly magnificent.
The immense windows flooded the apartment with the afternoon light, which I loved. The furniture in the penthouse was sparse, practical, but beautiful: A brushed copper lamp that swept upwards gracefully from its stand on the floor like the graceful, arched neck of a swan; the light fitting hovering over the roughhewn dining table; a battered leather three-seater couch that looked wildly comfortable; stacks and stacks of books on shelves; understated trinkets hidden in corners, and striking, bold, dark artwork that covered the walls. The same gold flecked, polished concrete spanned the length of the living room, and caught the light so well that it looked like it was burning in places.
