Chapter Two

When I wake up my wife is in the shower singing to herself. I roll over and put my feet on the floor. I'm tired still and my body aches from the unused adrenaline produced last night. I cough up some brownish phlegm from the cigarettes and spit it in a tissue.

I hear the shower stop. My wife walks in the room naked and traipses over to her dresser with an energetic spring in her step.

"Good morning love," she says cheerfully.

"Good morning Elle," I say while rubbing my eyes with both hands.

"How was work?"

I cough again.

"Long," I say.

"Tough client?" She asks.

"Not particularly," I say. "Pretty standard, just a late night."

She turns and looks at me sympathetically while she steps into her panties.

"Did you talk to Mica about cutting back on some of the night shifts?"

I yawn, stretch and stand up.

"No, it was too late when I got done. I just wanted to get home. I thought I'd swing by this morning and have a few words with her."

"Well, be tough. Stand your ground. You've been doing all the over-nights lately. She's got to have someone else that can take a night shift or two."

I laugh and walk over to her and kiss her forehead.

"I'll do what I can," I tell her.

I walk into the bathroom and sit on the toilet. I grab the toothbrush from the shower and scrub my teeth while I'm doing my business. Elle comes in, dressed now. She's in three inch nude heels, stockings and a skirt suit that is more than a little flattering on her. She spritzes her hair with some aerosol product and comes over to kiss me goodbye.

"Hey, how come everyone at work gets to see you all decked out in the naughty lawyer garb, but all I get is the jammy pants and t-shirt?"

She laughs. It's a nice laugh; easy and carefree.

"You got to see me naked two seconds ago."

"Not the same thing," I argue.

"Well, I'll tell you what. You go tell your boss to stop hogging all your evenings and I'll show you what a naughty lawyer I can be."

I smile.

"Deal," I say.

"Okay," she says. "Gotta go put away all those bad guys."

She kisses my lips and saunters out of the bathroom with a sassy sway in her hips intended to show me just what I'm missing when I work late.

I sigh. Time to put on my big boy panties and talk to the boss. Another shower and I'm back in my uniform. I holster my weapon and comb back my hair. I'm out of the house by nine a.m. I steer my car back towards the city rehearsing my conversation in my head.

"Look Mica, I owed you. I owed you a lot, but that was fifteen years ago and I've been working it off ever since. Don't you think maybe we're even by now? Can't we just call it square? Can't I ever walk away?"

I chuckle to myself at the absurdity of it. I work for Mica Kole. That's a present tense statement, always. No one ever says they worked for Mica. Anyone in the position to say that honestly isn't so much talking anymore.

On paper it seems like Mica is the good guy, or gal as it were, but that's on paper. It's like saying the Pharos of Egypt were amazing because of the beautiful pyramids they built. You're kind of leaving out how they managed to get that done in the first place.

I'm not saying I'm a slave, I'm just saying I work for Mica and to my knowledge anyone who works for Mica only ever works for Mica. She does good things too. She get's real scumbags off the streets. Not petty crooks, real assholes that hurt people. She does this in one of two ways. Either she converts them like she did with me, or she sends a convert to eliminate them.

You could argue that this is fine. The legal system doesn't work for shit here. Folks just want their kids to be able to walk home from school without being shot. If they knew what was going on, well they just might think Mica is a hero. Hell, I used to.

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When I was nineteen I was a piece of shit. The only reason I graduated high school was that failing me would have hurt the school's graduation stats more than it would hurt my future. I dealt ecstasy and heroin and quite a bit of pot to kids at the Jr. College near my house as well as the high school, and even the middle school if they had money.

I screwed a lot. I'd tell girls anything they wanted to hear to get in their pants, and if that didn't work I'd trade them drugs for sex. I even hit a girl once or twice when I felt like she was belittling me. I hit guys too. I'd beat the shit out of any guy that I thought I could take just to show that I could. I stole... anything. From anyone. Family, friends, strangers. It didn't matter. I was an absolute waste of the air around me and I thought that acting that way made me powerful.

I wasn't powerful though. I wasn't even weak really. I was nothing, but I didn't know it. Not until that night in the city. I'd grown up in the suburbs and all my thuggery was inflicted against other suburban kids. Kids who had soft lives and wealthy parents. Kids who were easy to take advantage of. I found the city to be a much different place.

I had a client, a kid at the high school I sold a lot of E to. He told me he had a cousin in the city that was looking for a big supply for a party. She didn't have any money, but she was fine and she'd do a three way with me and her girlfriend for fifteen pills. I wasn't going to say no to that.

The kid set it up and that weekend we drove to the city. Her place was a run down public housing tower on the Northside that everyone knew by name. It was a concrete fortress of buildings, some abandoned, many with boarded up windows or burn marks on the cement. There was no security at the entrance or doorman to check in with so we made our way to her place unannounced. When we rang the bell at her door it was opened by her old man.

He was middle aged and gnomish in a greasy undershirt with his belly hanging out like he was eight and a half months pregnant. He didn't seem phased by our request to see his daughter so we slid past him to a small bedroom just past the kitchen.

The girl was cute, and her friend was really hot. They started kissing as soon as we sat down, then they both made their way over to me and started reaching for my fly. That's when I put on the brakes. I told them I wasn't going to fuck them a room away from her craggy old man, and I certainly wasn't going to do it right in front of her pervy cousin.

She suggested we head across the street to the other building. I don't know what made me think that shagging in a burnt out condemned building was better. I was pretty wound up at that point so, I suppose I just wasn't thinking at all.

The building next door was like standing inside a filthy fireplace. Soot covered the walls and there was charred debris everywhere. In the corner of the entryway, maybe ten feet from the front door, was a thick dirty mattress.

The girls jumped on it immediately and looked back at me while running their hands up under each other's shirts. My brain was on fire, and I had pins and needles running down my neck. I had tunnel vision looking at the two of them kissing and touching each other. In retrospect, it's not surprising that I forgot to close the door we came in through.

I walked over to the bed and let them undo my pants. They pulled them down to my knees, then did the same with my boxers. The friend took my junk in her hand and squeezed tight. I looked down at her to tell her to ease up and noticed they were both looking right past me with matching grins.

Then I heard the click.

The girls jumped up on the mattress and started laughing and squealing with overhyped teenage glee. They were bouncing and laughing and pointing; calling me profane names. I turned my head to see the father standing behind me with a dull, beat up revolver pointing right at my head.

They took the drugs, my wallet, my shoes and socks, my car keys and some pot I had on me for later, then the old man told the girls to get gone and they did. He ordered me to get on my knees. I did as I was told. I started crying, kneeling there with my bare limp dick swinging between my pasty thighs, waiting for the sound I probably wouldn't even have time to hear.

When the sound came it was different than I expected. Less of a bang and more of a crack. Then a loud grunt and a thud. After a moment of silence a new voice told me to get up. There was a new man standing behind me. He was dressed like he was going to a funeral and holding a long wooden baseball bat. Next to him, on the ground, was the girl's dad, unconscious.

I was a blubbering mess. I tried to say thank you to the mystery man, but he told me I'd better not. Then he told me something that it would take years for me to learn on my own. He said that the day would come when thanking him would be the last thing I wanted to do. That's when he took me to meet Mica Kole.