Page 27 of The Syndicates Hostage

“I aim to please.” I said, but it didn’t sound like my voice. It sounded more like a clone of myself that wasn’t quite right. Like I was hollow, which was an apt description.

I felt like the bottom of my stomach had fallen out and my gut had spilled all over my shoes. How was I going to fix this one? He wanted photos. He wanted to send them to her father. He wanted other people to touch her. He wanted much more than I was willing to give.

I had shared women with other men before, I was no stranger to that. I even enjoyed watching a woman getting fucked up the ass while she sucked my cock. It was a hell of a great sight and any man who says he wouldn’t want to see that is lying. I have watched as women were being used by more than one man. The idea of the other men did not make me squeamish.

It was the idea of other men touching Anita.

The thought made me want to rip off my steering wheel and throw it through the window. It made me want to reach through the phone and pull my father’s tongue from his throat, wrap it around his neck and choke him with it. Both of these images ran through my head as I watched Ja walk up the path by the river, heading to my car. I had taken a lot longer than he expected me to.

“Well Dad, I’ve got to handle something with Jax so I’ll talk to you later.” I told him and I heard my father’s smile in his voice.

“Alright son. Take care of business and remember that I’m proud of you.”

I hung up the phone and looked at it in my hand for a moment, wishing I could just crumple the tiny piece of technology in my hand and snap it into pieces. If I wouldn’t just be forced to get another one I would, but I didn't feel like wasting the money on something I would just have to replace.

Trying to focus on the present and worry about tonight’s dilemma later, I got out of the car. Jax leaned against my hood and watched me, waiting patiently.

“Hey, Niero.” Jax said and I tipped my chin at him.

“Jax. What’s the big concern?” I asked. Jax scratched the back of his head and didn’t answer right away which told me that no matter what it was, I wasn’t going to like it. I waited a few moments to let him get his thoughts together but when he still didn’t answer, I just got annoyed. “Jax!”

“Right… umm… you might just want to follow me.” He finally said and turned, walking towards the little path he had come up with when I was on the phone with my dad. We had to hop the tiny wooden fence, but other than that, the trail was easygoing. It looked like people traveled this way a lot because there were wrappers and empty cans entangled in the weeds. At one point I saw a whole pile of dirty needles which I wasn’t surprised about, but didn’t like seeing. I was not one to judge people on their vices, but needle freaks were a breed all on their own that just as a whole made me feel uncomfortable.

The path wound along the edge of the river until the river split and part of it went under the bridge. The path split in two, one path going up the hill to the road, the other going under the bridge. I didn’t need Jax leading me to know where we weregoing. There was nothing on the side of the road, I would have passed it before I got to the little parking lot.

He looked back over his shoulder as if telling me to keep following and then headed under the bridge along the edge. There wasn’t too much room to walk; the river sloshed up and over the edge onto the little pathway, but there was a steep embankment and then what looked like a rock platform up high enough where, even if the river flooded, it wouldn’t reach. There was a rope ladder anchored to the edge of it, one that looked like it was ready to fall apart, but Jax grabbed onto it anyway and began climbing.

I continued following, although I didn’t want to. This was a druggie den if I had ever seen one and I absolutely did not want to be here, but I trusted Jax. Well… I trusted that he wouldn’t set me up to be jumped or something anyway. Not that I was worried about being jumped either. I could take a pack of needle freaks if necessary and hardly break a sweat, but we were on their turf and they knew the area.

So many scenarios passed through my head as I climbed and in all of them I was worried about what I would tell Anita when I got home. That was odd. I had never had to worry about telling anyone anything. Why was I worried about it now? Was it because we were married? Had that changed that for me?

When I reached the top I could tell instantly that there was only one other person on the platform and I relaxed, just a little, but then the smell hit me and I covered my nose with my hand. I knew that smell. It smelled like shit and vomit; the smell of an animal in a cage. I glared at Jax, who was holding his face much like I was. He shrugged and walked over to the person sitting against the wall of the bridge, slumped over to the side with his arm sticking out, resting on a backpack. There was a blue band tied tightly around his skinny forearm and there was a needle sticking out of the crook of his arm.

As we got closer to him, the smell got stronger and I realized that it wasn’t because of the inhabitants of the area that made everything smell so bad. It was because the man sitting there with the needle in his arm was dead. His eyes were rolled back in his head so the only part of his eyes we could see were the whites which were dull purple now instead of white and they bulged in their sockets like they were straining against the droopy eyelids. The man’s mouth was hanging open and there was vomit, dried and flaking on his chin. His tongue was swollen and black, his skin gray, and even through all that I could see that it was in fact Gizmo.

“You found him alright.” I muttered and turned away, heading to the edge of the landing to hopefully get some fresh air. Jax followed me, going for the same thing, I imagined.

“Yeah, took a while too. This isn’t one of his normal hangouts and he didn’t touch needles, man. I only found him because one of our clients had come up here yesterday and thought that he might be Giz. Turns out he was right, but this doesn’t add up man. He didn’t touch needles. He was a meth addict, sure, but this wasn’t his drug of choice.”

“Maybe he was branching out?” I suggested. Jax shook his head.

“Nah, Gizmo wouldn’t switch. He hated needles, always said they creeped him out.”

“Can’t say I blame him.” I sighed and looked over my shoulder at the body. “So you think someone did this to him?”

“Well, it’s not self-inflicted. Dollars to doughnuts someone else's fingerprints are on that needle in his arm. I just can’t figure out why.” Jax said.

“I don't know. “ I shrugged. “ Could be anything. Maybe he pissed someone off. Maybe it was retaliation for the Russians the other day. Maybe it was in retaliation to something else. Anunhappy customer. Could be a million things, but the bottom line is that Gizmo is dead.”

“Yeah.” Jax scratched the back of his head again and looked over his shoulder at Gizmo too. “What do we do with him? We can’t just leave him here.”

“Well seeing as this doesn’t have the family’s name on it, I think I’ll make a call to a friend of mine on the force, see if he can figure out who did this to him. For the most part, this is out of my jurisdiction, but I want to make sure we don’t have someone gunning for our dealers. Hopefully this is an isolated incident, but call Trips and tell him to keep his eye out and not go anywhere alone until we figure this thing out. Same for the other guys; no one does transactions alone.”

“Yes Sir.” He nodded and instantly got on his phone.

While he made the phone calls he had to make, I climbed down the ladder, praying to whatever god might listen to me that the ladder didn’t snap while I was on it. There was no way I would ever be going back up to that platform. Between the ladder and the smell, I was good for a lifetime.

When I got to the bottom, I called Derek, the Deputy Chief of police in the area. Funny enough, we had gone to school together when we were kids and we were friends. Up until he went into the police force and found out what my father did. Since then we’ve grown apart and into different people, but we still do favors for one another from time to time. Two months ago there was a domestic violence case that landed a woman in the hospital in a coma. They don’t think she’ll ever come out of it and this was not the man’s first offense, The cops couldn’t prove anything though seeing as it was just his word on what happened so Derek had asked me to pay the man a visit and make sure it would never happen again.

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