The Cure
by Peter A. Bodi

Frankie the fixer hated some of the things he did for money.  There were times when he just wanted to get in a hot shower.  Today, though, was much worse than usual.  He thought of Lady Macbeth, the woman hustler he’d learned about in a drama course some hippie woman taught in the state pen.  He wanted to scrub himself with steel wool until he bled.  Frankie couldn’t help but get like this when kids were involved, but business was business.  The boy who sat in the back seat of his Cadillac Escalade was about ten years old, dark haired and a little plump.  The child looked to be of Italian heritage, just like Frankie himself.  The look on his young face was one of mild excitement, like he thought this whole thing was some kind of field trip.

Frankie dry swallowed a couple of Percocet tablets.  The doctor had given them to him for his back a couple of years ago.  It no longer hurt, but he still took the pills.  Reminding himself that he had to get it over with, he went into the Mc Donald’s, the automatic doors whooshing open as he approached.  It was one of the new ones, large, clean and modern, a good, public spot to meet, right off of Rittenhouse Square in Center City.  The place was all decked out in reds, greens and tinsel for the Christmas that would arrive in five days. The heat inside made him loosen his grey wool overcoat as he scanned the place for the customer. He spotted the man, Zlatko Milic, who nodded to him as he sat down.

“Did you bring the child?” Zlatko asked.  Frankie nodded.  The guy’s Eastern European accent was vintage Bela Lugosi and made him sound extra creepy.

“Did you bring the money?” Frankie countered.  Under the table, Zlatko slipped Frankie a paper shopping bag.  There were bundles of bills underneath wadded up tissue paper.  The bag came from Gap Kids.  He wondered is this Zlatko guy was a frequent shopper there.  A lot of seemingly average Americans were slaves to twisted compulsions, the term average having undergone considerable renovation over Frankie’s career hustling.  He had a rep as the guy to go to if you needed something and you wouldn’t or couldn’t go about it legally.  They called him the fixer because he fixed up those who had a supply with those afflicted by a demand.  He told himself that if he didn’t provide his services, people would find just find someone else to do it anyway.  It was an old chorus and he sung it to himself, over and over.  Sometimes, he even believed it.      
 
Zlatko Milic was a weak jawed man in his forties, thin, balding, with eyes so brown they were almost black.  He was dressed in expensive jeans, a silk Italian shirt, and a similarly high end leather coat.  Frankie couldn’t help but notice the car keys this foreign goof was holding.  He knew that they went to a luxury model Mercedes sports coup because he had helped thieves fence them. Details didn’t get by Frankie the fixer.  He studied the people he did business with.  He could read most of them the way some people read books. 

This Zlatko guy was some rocket scientist. Literally.  He had been a ballistic missile expert for the Yugoslavian army and immigrated to America.  Now he earned big bucks in the defense industry, helping to protect the good old U. S. of A. from foreign threats.  Frankie didn’t know what it was about these boy lovers, but they seemed to be much wealthier than the average American.  And they stuck together, having tight networks and powerful connections that they developed online and stretched around the world.  Zlatko liked to talk about his life and how he and his kind were misunderstood.  This evening, though, he got right to the point.

“Where is the child, this William?” Zlatko asked, his voice betraying both impatience and excitement.

“Hold your horses, Chief.  I’m just gonna make sure the money’s all here.  Then I’ll take you to Billy”, Frankie told him.

He counted the money discretely under the table, looking around every now and then for any cops or suspicious looking civilians who could be undercover.  The police were getting pretty good at infiltrating these guys and Frankie wanted to be sure that they weren’t on to him and ready to ruin his payday.  He knew for a fact that Zlatko did research of his own, hiring both a private investigator and a lawyer to give Frankie the once over.  You couldn’t blame a man with his hobby for being careful. 

“You will find that the money is all there”, Zlatko said.  “I will take care of this boy and give him everything he needs.  More than everything.  He will be loved. His new home will not be like that welfare hotel.”

“Good to know”, Frankie replied.  His face betrayed no emotion.  Ever since prison, he could be cold as stone when he had to be.  The place had a way of doing that to you.  Zlatko seemed sincere, like he really believed he was doing the kid a favor by buying him. 

“Tell me”, Zlatko asked, “When did the boy realize he was gay?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Chief.  But we’ll go out and do introductions.  You can ask Billy yourself“, he answered.  Frankie forced himself to be quiet and not show any disgust in his expression.  He had known a number of gay men in prison.  Some of them were OK, some of them weren’t.  They were like anybody else; except they happened to love other men the way Frankie loved women.  Zlatko’s sickness had nothing to do with being gay and had everything to do with being a predator and a sociopath.  Some freak had probably done something to him when he was a child in some God awful state orphanage in Belgrade.  The money was all there, so at least this would be over soon.  Zlatko followed Frankie outside to the Escalade, each man pulling their coats tight against the December wind that was blowing bitter cold.

Billy looked up from his Nintendo DS as a rear door opened and Frankie stood there looking at him, accompanied by an adult he’d never seen before.  He looked annoyed to be interrupted in the middle of a game.  His eyes returned to the screen.

“Billy, this is the man who’ll be taking care of you.  This is Mr. Milic”, Frankie said.

“Please call me Zlatko. Or you can just call me Z”, the stranger said as he slid into the back seat.  Billy finally put down his game as the smiling foreigner sidled up next to him.  He said hello, shaking the boy’s hand with one arm while gently resting the other one on his knee.

Zlatko was very pleased.  He liked this boy’s type.  Then he noticed the can of Red Bull that was in the child’s cup holder.  How could this Frankie fixer person be so irresponsible as to allow a child to have such poison?  He saw the pack of Kool cigarettes in the boy’s shirt pocket.  His sexually charged excitement dampened as he began to realize something was wrong.  Looking closer now at the boy, he saw the scars and the lines on his face that meant he was older than ten years old, despite his diminutive size.  As Zlatko tried to exit the SUV, a large African American man emerged from beneath a blanket in the back compartment.   He put his arms around the pedophile’s neck from behind in a choke hold.

The molester began to lose consciousness as the oxygen to his brain dwindled.  Before he blacked out, he saw the black man’s face in the rear view mirror.  His head was shaved, but he had a long beard flecked with gray, giving him the appearance of an Old Testament prophet.  As he choked Zlatko out, his eyes burned with something worse than hatred.  The man bound his hands behind his back with plastic ties.  He wrapped his unconscious victim in the blanket, made sure the street was clear, and folded him into the small trunk of the Mercedes sport coup.  He had to slam the trunk down a few times to get it to close.  The rush hour traffic whizzed past on Chestnut Street, oblivious to the abduction that had taken place underneath the holiday lights. 

“Strong work, Rahim”, Frankie said to the big man who had helped corner their quarry tonight.  Rahim Ellis had been his cell mate at Grateford.  He had also been a standout defensive end at Temple, the best player on a very bad team. A knee injury and a bogus rape charge caused him to swap football for dope.  His habit eventually led to incarceration. Frankie wasn’t a little guy, but Rahim dwarfed him.  He laughed when he saw how the ex-lineman had to contort himself just to get behind the wheel of Zlatko’s little Mercedes.   

Billy the kid stood on the sidewalk, lighting one his Kools, getting some looks of shock and disapproval from the Christmas shoppers.  In reality, Billy was actually an eighteen year old who had been in juvenile facilities three times for assault and possession with intent to distribute.  He had something called celiac disease.  Steroids and kidney failure had caused his growth to be stunted.  Frankie knew that the kid’s mother had just died and he needed all the money he could get.  Everybody expected Billy to crash and burn now, like a satellite that no longer had gravity to keep it in orbit.  Frankie hoped not, because he was a good sort of kid and because he wanted to use him in the same role again.

“Thanks, Frankie”, Billy said after pocketing the two grand that was his part of the cut.  Frankie watched him disappear onto the bustling street, hoping he wouldn’t use the money he just scored to overdose.  He yelled to Billy to have a merry Christmas, but the kid was already gone.   It wasn’t even five o’clock yet, but the sun had already set.  There seemed to be less light everyday.

The winter landscape of Pennsylvania passed outside the Escalade’s windows as Frankie drove and evening became night.  At first there was the twinkling of lights outside, but as they got away from the city and into the country, there was nothing but shapeless blackness.  He looked for the Benz’s headlights in the Escalade’s rear view mirror.  He was certain that the big guy was hitting every pot hole he could in an effort to batter the human cargo in the trunk.  He hired Rahim as muscle whenever he had a job that required it.  His former cell mate always had his back.  He was the closest thing he had to a friend.  Rahim had been clean now for a couple of years, even as Frankie tried to get more numb. 

When he told Rahim that the job was taking down a pedophile, his eyes lit up like they did back in the day when he had a televised game with a ranked team.  Frankie knew then that it wasn’t just the money.  Something, somewhere, must have happened, probably when Rahim had been young.  Frankie thought of asking him if he wanted to talk about it, but he knew plenty of guys like Rahim.  It was easier for them to kill themselves than it was to talk about it.  If he wanted to go there one day, Frankie would be there.  After driving nearly three hours, the Escalade stuttered and bounced down a gravel road that led to an abandoned strip mine.  He parked and the Mercedes pulled up beside him.     

As Frankie stepped out of his car, he fingered the Blackberry in his pocket.  He had taken it from Zlatko.  The freak had mentioned that he kept all his contacts on it.  The small device weighed heavy in his hand.

Screams came from the sports car’s trunk, the shrillness undampened by a layer of the steel and aluminum.  Rahim got out of the Benz, stretching his long limbs and grinning.  In the two decades that he’d known him, it was the only time Frankie had seen his face erupt with what an observer could call joy.  Zlatko let out a desperate, high pitched wail that couldn’t be mistaken for anything but a cry of terror.

“Scream all you want”, Frankie told him, “We’re way deep in the sticks.  There isn’t a soul around.”

“What do you do this for?” the foreigner inside the trunk yelled. “I know Frankie, how you and your friends are not cops.”

“No, we’re not cops, Zlatko. You’re going to wish that we were, though”, Frankie replied.

“Please, I have money, lots of money”, Zlatko pleaded.  He paused a moment, then added, “I promise that I will see a doctor and get help for this disease.”

“Disease?” Rahim asked.” Come on.  Give me a friggin’ break.  Diabetes and cancer are diseases.  What you do is evil!  A disease?” 

“Please, have Mercy for me.  I am not all bad”, he said, but without the conviction to convince himself, let alone anyone else.  “What are you going to do now, Frankie?..... Please, open the trunk.”

“We’ll open it, alright, Milic”, Frankie answered.  “To put an end to this conversation.” 

Rahim pulled his .38 snub-nose from a pocket in his overcoat.  He popped open the trunk because he wanted to see the look on the man’s face; make sure he felt the fear of God right now.  The bound man was folded into the small, cramped space, the thin limbs and body compressed into a ball, the plastic ties binding his hands behind his back.  Zlatko was a slight man and as Rahim looked down on him, he couldn’t help but think of an unborn child in a mother’s womb.  He had no idea where the thought came from.  Zlatko looked up, catching sight of the gun in the moonlight.

“Well, Zlatko, this is what happens”, Rahim began. ” We’re all born with a clean slate. It’s what we do that matters.  And when you do evil things, that bitch named karma bites you back. Now, you see what befalls you.” The words flowed out like they came from a black preacher. He had taken the hippie chick’s Shakespeare course along with Frankie.  Studying all that uppity, Caucasian limey talk never helped an ex-con make a dime in the real world, but he had appreciated how to say things for dramatic effect.  If you were a hustler, it was a useful skill.  You could make yourself seem ominous, inevitable.  This Yugoslavian was the worst kind of no account punk.  He’d hoped that he’d given him a taste of what a young victim felt.

Zlatko shut his eyes.  A few seconds later, there were four loud pops.

When he opened his eyes again, Zlatko realized he wasn’t bleeding.  The black man had pulled the trigger, but fired into the sky above the car.  The trunk was slammed on him again, leaving him once more in total darkness.  To be left alone in blackness once more was worse than being killed.  Tears flowed out of him like a dam that had been overflowing for many years and had finally broken.

“Don’t worry, Milic”, Frankie said, “we’re responsible people here.  Yeah.  The state troopers are coming.  They’re going to find CDs with proof of how sick you are in the glove compartment.  I’m sure they’ll find you suitable accommodations.  Good luck surviving in general population.  The inmates just love guys like you.  You might want to brush up on those people skills. ”

The two men walked away, deaf to the pleas still coming from the trunk.  They’d wait until they were back in Philly tomorrow morning to put in the anonymous call to the state police.  It was going to be cold overnight.  If Zlatko succumbed to hypothermia before the troopers found him the next day, Frankie and Rahim wouldn’t exactly lose sleep over it.

The Escalade hurtled down the highway, the exit signs for towns Frankie never heard of passing by like years of his life.  Rahim sat in the passenger seat, counting his eight grand cut.  His Harold Melvin and the Blue notes CD was playing on the stereo, Teddy Pendergast’s smoky voice as sweet as justice.  Zlatko’s Blackberry contained a trove of information about the pedophile network.  Frankie never had to do any another kind of hustle again.  He could live by taking down guys who hid behind screen names like BoyLover69 and get rich while doing it.  Christmas would be merry now and a very prosperous New Year awaited.  Ho, Ho, Ho.

Some of the freaks might come after them, but it was a chance he’d take.  After all, Rahim was down with this work and was as stand-up as they come.  The bottle of pain killers sat in Frankie’s pocket.  He didn’t think he’d need them anymore.  He was pretty sure this thing would be the cure.