Monsters
By Karen Singer
Chapter 41 – Rewind to the End – Part 1 of 2
Johnny Morrow was in his limousine on his way to work. But he wasn’t heading to his old headquarters building, he was heading toward one of the hideout buildings he had outside of town. Things had been quiet for a few days now, but he had seen quiet times before…usually just before all hell broke loose. It was one of the reasons he was so worried.
There were rumors circulating that Romo Geovelli had gotten hit a few days ago, and he had gotten hit hard. But they were just rumors. There was nothing to say whether those rumors were true or not. If Geovelli could get hit that hard, what would they do to him? He, Besinski, and Allingham were the only three bosses left in the city. There hadn’t been only three bosses since the fifties. Someone else was taking over Las Vegas and in the process getting rid of every boss here. Consequently, he was trying to make plans to move. Permanently.
His phone rang and he answered it. “Morrow!”
“Boss,” one of his men said. “We’re at the old building where your office used to be. You better get down here.”
“Why? It’s too dangerous.”
“It may not be. Someone left you a little present.”
“What kind of present?”
“Uh…I’m not sure. Just get down here and see for yourself.”
But Morrow couldn’t chance going anywhere where someone might find him. He sent another of his men instead. Five minutes after he arrived at his latest office, his phone rang again. The caller ID showed it was one of his top men. The man he had sent to check out the present. “Yeah?” he answered.
“Boss,” his man said. “I’m here, but I don’t believe what I’m seeing.”
“What is it?”
“Just get over here. It looks like Retribution has come through after all, and she left you proof and a receipt that the job is already paid in full.”
“What? She’s been missing for weeks! We thought she was dead.”
“Evidently not. Just get over here and see for yourself. Frankly, I don’t know what to make of it.”
Morrow had grave reservations about going, but he did. When he got there, he stayed in the car and sent two more of his men inside to check it out. Ten seconds after they walked through the door, one of them poked his head out and motioned that it was safe for Morrow to come in. He got out of the car nervously and entered the building. He got through the lobby and stopped. What he saw boggled his mind.
He recognized the man of course. Romo Geovelli. But he was stark naked, walking around in a squatted position with his arms bent up to his armpits and flapping them a bit as if they were wings. Geovelli didn’t appear to understand anything anyone was saying to him. He just tried to get away from all his men as it looked like he was searching the floor for something. It was a few moments before Morrow realized that Romo was making small noises. Kind of…clucking sounds. Like a…chicken! What the hell? As close as he could figure, Romo Geovelli was acting like…a chicken.
There was a sign hung around Geovelli’s neck. One of Morrow’s men grabbed it for him, which seemed to send Romo momentarily into a fit of panic, although to all appearances he still acted completely like a chicken. Morrow read the short message:
Morrow. Geovelli turned out to be behind everything. All of it. His mercenaries are all gone now, and as you can see, for all intents and purposes, so is Romo Geovelli. His mind has been torn from him and been replaced with the brain of a chicken – forever! We raided his accounts because of all the trouble he gave us, so your bill is paid in full. This is your receipt and proof that the job is done. – Retribution.
Morrow read through it twice. Romo was behind it all? But as far as he could see, the proof had to be right in front of him. At least according to Retribution. Still, he would keep his head down for a while more. He’d check with the others too to see what they knew. If Romo was indeed gone now, then there were business opportunities he had to jump on as soon as possible. No doubt Besinski and Allingham would be trying to jump on them as well. But did they know Romo was out of the business now? As far as he could see, he might have a slight advantage in knowing what they didn’t know – yet!
He looked at the…chicken moving around in his lobby. Romo Geovelli. Once the biggest boss in the city. Now, Morrow wasn’t sure what he was. Maybe he really was a chicken of some sort. But that begged the question. What the hell should he do with him…or it? It might be funny to take him out to a farm somewhere and put him in with a bunch of other chickens, just to see what happened. He smiled. Yeah. Now that would be very interesting. Maybe that’s what Retribution had in mind all along for him to do with Romo. And if Geovelli really was behind it all, that would be Retribution indeed.
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“Sit down, dear,” Janice Stokley said to the maid as she motioned toward one of the seats at the table.
Nervously, Natalia approached the table where both Mrs. Stokley and Brandy were sitting. She sat cautiously on the edge of the chair. Mrs. Stokley wasn’t a woman to be trifled with, and being called out for any reason at all was dangerous. She could lose her life. Worse, she could become one of the woman’s victims – a fate worse than death.
Janice leaned across the table and grabbed Natalia’s hand in hers. “Natalia,” she said kindly. “It has come to my attention that you don’t seem to be happy working for me. You want to move on. I have heard that you would like to possibly become Brandy’s maid instead.”
Natalia tried her best to judge the situation. Mrs. Stokley didn’t look angry, and neither did Brandy. She decided she needed to take a chance. “It’s not that I don’t like working for you, I love it. You gave me a big chance to prove myself. But it’s just that…my family has always been the personal servants to some of the most important people in history. And working for you, all I do is take care of your guests. I don’t…belong to anyone one particular person.” She looked over at Brandy. “And I just thought that…Miss Brandy might find me far more useful than that…thing she has now. I can do so much more for you miss than he can,” she said to Brandy.
Janice nodded. “I wondered if it was something like that. And your family history was one of the reasons I hired you in the first place. But Natalia, you do know that most of the people you take care of for me are some of the richest, most important people possible. Many of them are government leaders. Very influential people. I wouldn’t trust the care of those guests to anyone I didn’t fully trust. The people you handle for me require the very best care possible, and so far, you’ve done and outstanding job for me.”
“Thank you,” Natalia said, blushing slightly. I guess I hadn’t realized that. But it’s just…I guess I want to be needed by one person. Someone important. I want to be the person taking care of that one important person.”
“I see,” Janice replied. “And you think Brandy here would be a good fit for you?”
Natalia looked briefly at Brandy, then nodded. “Yes, Ma’am. If she’ll have me.”
“Natalia,” Brandy said. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate you’re offer, I do, but you have to understand something. I don’t have Ralphie there just to take care of me. All that is secondary. Natalia. I’m a bitch. A first class bitch. I’m a monster. And I take all my frustrations out on Ralphie nearly every day. The more I’m frustrated, the more I take it out on him. Natalia, working for me, I’d probably kill you inside a month. In a week, you’d be so afraid of me you wouldn’t know what to do about it. I’m sorry Natalia, but it just wouldn’t work out.”
Natalia’s eyes went wide with surprise, but she also felt disappointed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just hoping.”
Janice smiled. “Natalia, give me a little while. I’ll look around and see if there isn’t a better situation for you. Would that suit you?”
Again, Natalia was surprised. “Yes Ma’am. Very much. Thank you.”
Janice nodded. “Give me a little time, after we get home.”
What she didn’t tell Natalia, was that after working for her, Natalia knew too much. Natalia would become one of her few women victims, even though she would never know it. In a few weeks, Natalia would remain the perfect maid, absolutely happy to be working her hardest for her in any capacity she could. And in the process, Janice would do one other thing to her too. Most women yearned for a man they could love. Janice would remove that from her entirely and make her interested in women instead. Janice hated men. All men. She saw no need of any of them at all. So there was no reason she could see why Natalia should need one either. In the end, Natalia would be happy. Very happy. She would be the perfect maid for all her guests. And Natalia would find it impossible to tell any secrets about Janice and what she did.
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Two black motorcycles screamed down the highway. The riders were dressed from head to toe in black riding suits that offered no clues at all about who they were. Even their helmets that covered their entire heads made them totally anonymous. Only the shape of the bodies inside those riding suits told the story of two women, each with a young voluptuous figure. At the speeds the two women traveled, the trip from Las Vegas to Dallas, Texas didn’t take nearly as long as it would for someone driving a car.
For Brandy, this trip to Dallas was a total secret. Her Uncle Dominic who lived in Dallas would kill her if he knew she was there without his knowledge. Her Uncle Vinny would kill her twice over if he knew she was there – and especially why. But being a client now of Wu Enterprises had its advantages.
They stopped on the outskirts of the city at a house one of the Wu Enterprise agents had. “We found her,” the agent told them. “We are watching, but she is working still. She usually gets home about four o’clock.”
“Thanks,” Brandy told him. “I think the best time for us to do this is later tonight. After it gets dark.”
A few hours later, just before the women were going to leave, the agent came and found them. He had his phone stuck to his ear. “Miss Brandy,” the agent said. “Our people tell me that a car just pulled up to the condo where she lives. A man got out and is heading for her door.”
“Okay,” Brandy said. “We’ll have to wait.
The agent stayed there listening to his phone, then smiled and said. “It looks like she’s going out with him.”
“Huh!” Brandy grunted. “A date?”
“Possibly,” the agent replied.
“Okay,” Brandy said. “Have them keep watching.”
It was almost eleven at night by the time they got word that the car and the woman had returned.
“Do you want to do it tonight, or wait?” Carol asked.
“No. Let’s do it tonight. Unless the guy stays, of course.”
“The man went inside with her,” the agent told them, his phone still stuck to his ear.
“Doesn’t sound good,” Carol noted.
“Wait!” the agent said. “He’s coming out again. Getting into his car.”
“Let’s do this,” Brandy told them.
They followed the Wu agent to the condo where Brandy’s very first victim lived. Bobbie. They studied the situation from a distance. Brandy went to talk briefly with the agent. “And you’re sure that nobody knows we’re here?” she asked. “I’m particularly worried about my uncle.”
“No one knows,” the agent assured her. “As you requested, we have been particularly cautious.”
“Okay. Thanks,” Brandy told him. With a nod at Carol, she got her bike moving and headed into the parking lot. The two of them parked their bikes where the woman’s friend had parked just a little while earlier.
“Let me,” Carol said to Brandy as they approached the ground-floor door. “Maybe you should stand back.
Brandy moved away from the door and Carol knocked. It was a minute before the door was answered by a nice looking woman. “Bobbie?” Carol asked.
“Yes?” Bobbie replied cautiously, seeing a woman she didn’t know, and one dressed for riding a motorcycle. “Who are you?”
“I’m your guarantee that you won’t get hurt and nothing bad will happen to you.”
“What?” Bobbie replied, now more nervous than she had been.
“May we come in?” Carol asked.
“We? Who’s…”
Carol pushed her backwards into her apartment, only then did Brandy move from the side of the doorway and come in. She was closing the door behind them before Bobbie even saw her.
“What’s going on?” Bobbie asked in alarm. And then she finally got a good look at Brandy. Her mouth fell open and a moment later, the fear hit her. “You!”
Brandy nodded as she got her first good look at Bobbie. “Yeah. It’s me,” she replied.
Bobbie nearly fell down from the fear. Tears came to her eyes. “No. I had hoped you’d be gone forever.”
“Don’t worry,” Brandy told her. “I am gone forever. I’m not even here now. Trust me, nobody will ever know I was here.”
“And like I said,” Carol added. “I’m here to guarantee nothing will happen to you. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Who are you?” Bobbie asked Carol.
Carol grunted a laugh. “An assassin,” she replied.
“You’re going to kill me?” Bobbie asked, backing up a few steps.
“Nope! Like I said, I’m your guarantee that nothing will happen to you at all. This meeting is about one thing and one thing only.”
“What?” Bobbie asked.
“Talking,” Brandy replied. “You were my very first victim. Which means you were special to me. You were back in high school, and it’s been that way every since. All I want to do is to find out how you’re doing. That’s all. Nothing more.”
“How I’m doing?”
“That’s all,” Brandy replied. “Can we sit? Maybe have some coffee or something?”
“Sit?” Bobbie asked, not really understanding things.
“And maybe some coffee,” Carol added.
But Bobbie was just standing there, too frightened to move.
“Bobbie!” Carol said firmly. “Coffee!”
Bobbie finally moved toward the kitchen, but she kept her eyes on Brandy almost the entire time. While Bobbie made some coffee, Brandy and Carol sat down at the table.
“You’ve got a boyfriend,” Brandy said.
“We’ve…gone out a few times now,” Bobbie told her. “You were watching me?”
“No. Unfortunately, I didn’t see him. We had someone else watching for when you’d be home so we could come by. We would have done this earlier if we could.”
“Someone watching us?”
“Don’t worry, as soon as we leave, they’ll be gone – forever!”
“How am I supposed to know…”
“Trust us!” Carol told her firmly. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
When the coffee was ready, Bobbie brought each of them a cup. She grabbed a cup for herself, then sat down at the table with them. But she was obviously nervous. “You’re not going to start…”
“No!” Brandy said cutting her off. “I’m not going to do anything with you, except talk. And this will probably be the only time in my life I’m going to do it. Like we said, you’ve got nothing to worry about. I just want to find out how you’re doing. What your life is like now. How long did it take you to stop wearing the diapers?”
There was a troubled look on Brandy’s face. “Years!” she finally admitted. “It was three years before I even dared try going without them. Then it took me a few more years to fully gain continence again. I still sometimes wet the bed at night. Fortunately, not often anymore.”
Brandy nodded. “But dressing as a girl stuck.”
Bobbie nodded hesitantly. “The way things were with my mother, because of what you forced me to do, I could never tell her about you. Never! So it was easier to just tell her this was the direction I wanted to go with my life. Eventually…” She shrugged. “I got here.”
“Did you ever have that final operation?” Brandy asked.
“Four years ago,” Bobbie admitted.
Brandy nodded. “No going back now,” she said.
Bobbie shook her head. “No.”
Brandy leaned forward. “Bobbie, are you happy?”
“Happy?”
“Yes. Happy. Are you happy with your life?”
“I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if you hadn’t…done this to me. Would I have been better off, or not? Back in Cincinnati, we had nothing at all. But there was this man there that we only know as Mr. Vinny. He helped us out and got my mother a much better job here in Dallas. By the time we moved, I had no choice at all but to go as a girl. And after we got here, I was still too afraid of you to change anything. Like I said, I was even too afraid to not wear the diapers all the time – for years! I never knew how you did it, but somehow, you could always see what I was doing. Always! You knew everything! I had no way of knowing if you could still see me here in Dallas or not, so I dared not change anything.”
“But Bobbie,” Brandy said again, “Please, are you happy in the life you have now?”
Bobbie stared at her for a moment. “Yes. I am,” she replied. “I teach kindergarten, and I love it. I date sometimes, and I enjoy it. So I guess, I’m happy. Happy enough anyway. I just don’t know how happy I would have been if I had stayed as who I was, before you did this to me. I’ll never know.”
“No,” Brandy admitted. “You’ll never know. Nobody will ever know. But I do know that you were poor. Dirt poor. You and your mother barely survived. I do know that even back I Cincinnati, my Uncle Vinny was watching out for you, even while I was still messing with you. If it wasn’t for him, things would have been far worse for you and your mother, and you would never have had the opportunities you’ve had ever since.”
“Your uncle?”
“Yeah. Vinny is my uncle. And he’s a powerful man. Powerful enough that even I don’t dare go against his word. And his word was that I should never see you again. So this is a little meeting that never happened. You’ll never hear from me again. I just wanted to…see you. To find out…what your life is like now.”
Bobbie shook her head. “My life is good. I’m happy. I just don’t know what my life would have been otherwise.”
“How about your mother?” Brandy asked. “How is she?”
“She’s fine,” Bobbie replied, then smiled. “She’s worked her way up to a vice-president in her corporation now. A real big shot. She makes very good money now. Not like when we lived up north.”
“Good! I’m glad to hear it. Are you two still close?”
Bobbie’s eyes went wide. “Very! I just pray you’re not going to do something now to ruin things.”
“I guarantee it won’t happen,” Carol threw in.
“You? An assassin?”
“Trust me,” Carol told her. “I can guarantee that Brandy will have nothing more to do with you…or your mother.”
Brandy stood up. From the pockets of her riding suit, she started pulling wads of wrapped bills. Money. She set it all on the table. “There’s twenty-five thousand dollars there,” she told Bobbie. “Buy yourself something nice. Do something with it that will make you happy. On me.”
Bobbie stared at all the money, then looked angrily back at Brandy. “Is this your way of saying you’re sorry? Because it will never be enough!”
“Am I sorry? Hell no! You were simply my first. My very first victim, of which there have been more than I can count. My whole life now is dedicated to doing horrible things to people. You were lucky, most of the people I work with now wind up either maimed for life, or dead.” She nodded her head at Carol. “She’s an assassin, one of the best in the world. And I’m an enforcer. I make sure people toe the line inside of criminal organizations.”
“And she’s one of the best in the world at it too,” Carol added.
“I’m not sorry at all. You were simply my first, that’s all. And as such, you’re special to me. You always will be.”
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