A Small Gray Dot

Her face crumpled and tears seeped down her heavily rouged cheeks. “Oh! But… but… he… he… won’t li… like me now! I’ve done—”

I softened my voice. “He doesn’t care about that, Marilyn. Your brother hired me to find you because he’s worried about you. Now if you really don’t want to go back, well, I’ll tell him that.” I would also report it to the police though I didn’t tell her that. Prostitution became legal everywhere in recent years but not for underage people, and not under the circumstances in which she had become one. “I’d rather you come back with me, though. Home is where you belong. Cameron loves you very much and I’m certain you can work out your differences with him.” I smiled and added gently, “Come on, what will it hurt to give it a go?”

She sniffled and the tears still rolled, but she nodded. “Okay. But Drew’s gonna be mad.” She wiped her eyes on a sleeve. “Will you go with me to get my stuff?”

I smiled. “Sure.” I got out of the car and stepped around to the sidewalk.

I should’ve told her to leave it and she could get more stuff but I suppose it was a lesson I needed to learn.

We walked down toward the guy who was leaning on the wall.

As we approached him, she said, her voice nervous, “Drew, this is Tennessee. My brother sent him to get me. He wants me to come home and—”

Drew, who was about my height but probably outweighed me by forty muscular pounds, straightened up and snarled out, “What? You ain’t going no damn where, girl!” He turned to me, glaring. “You take your skinny ass back to Charlotte and tell that chicken-shit brother of hers that she belongs to me now!”

Looking at him, I could see, even with his size, how he could’ve passed for twenty. He had a baby face and that would be enough to fool most folk but the people I’d talked to, people who knew him, verified that he was thirty.

Now, as a rule, I have nothing against prostitution, or pimps for that matter. Making a living was hard and if that brought home the bread, okay. But, I felt it should be a mutual agreement between the hooker and the pimp, and the hooker needed to be older than fifteen. She in fact needed to be an adult. This girl was way too young. Unfortunately, when I tried to point that out to Drew, I didn’t get very far.

 “Look, man,” I started out, but the son of a bitch pushed me up against the wall, grabbed me in the collar, and punched me in the face. The back of my head hit the brick wall and my ears rang like the last bell for homeroom. I heard Marilyn scream.

“I said leave, asshole! She ain’t going with you—”

I couldn’t get to the gun in my shoulder holster, and had neglected to take the iron bar from my bag in the car that I kept in case I ran up on this type of situation. I should’ve put it in a pocket but since I hadn’t, I kicked him in the balls. He gasped and fell to his knees, and I clasped my fists together and bashed him in the top of his head. He went over on the sidewalk.

My head still ringing, I grabbed Marilyn’s hand and wobbled up the street to my car. I opened the passenger side door and shoved her in. As I pulled myself behind the wheel, she wailed, “But what about my stuff?”

I saw Drew trying to get to his feet as I cranked up the car. I had a gun but if we left, I wouldn’t have to use it. I shook my head. “You can get more stuff, Marilyn. If we stay here, I’ll have to shoot him and I’d rather not do that.” I had a better idea.

I went by the local precinct and reported him as a trafficker because Marilyn was underage. She was reluctant to report him at first – because she was afraid he might retaliate – but I assured her that her brother wouldn’t allow that to happen. He could afford bodyguards. She finally saw the logic in it when I pointed out that the pimp was likely to do it again.

I got her home, and she and Cameron had a happy reunion. He grinned and thanked me as he paid the rest of my fee. But, I knew from that incident that I needed to learn to fight better. The only reason I got away from Drew was because he didn’t anticipate the kick to his gonads.

When I got home, Lowell eyeballed the bruise on my jaw and the lump on my head and said if I was going to continue as a tracker, I needed to know how to fight. He took me down to his gym where he introduced me to his friend, Simon Wester, who was as pale and blue-eyed as Lowell was dark and brown-eyed, with a mane of long white hair he wore in a ponytail most of the time.

You learn what you have to learn. Simon was not a large man. He was shorter than I was and not muscular, but he was wiry and fast. He taught me to fight. He whipped my ass a lot but eventually I got better.

One thing Simon would say as he was pummeling or kicking me, “You got big feet, boy, learn to put them to use for more than walking.” He grinned. “Learn well enough and maybe you won’t have to kick anybody in the cojones again.”

Seemed Lowell told him about that. Then, still grinning, he added, “No shame in doing that, boy. You do whatever it takes, you know.”