He whistled as he landed on the driver's seat. Ketch liked his van. Liked it a lot. He turned the engine over, and watched the garage door go up the rest of the way.
Going to the Digs. Kind of a rough bar, but he always went there. With a stop on the way back to pick up a carton...
Absently, his hand slipped under the bucket seat. He kept a spare pack there. His fingers found it, hauled it out. He looked...
It was his brand. Same kind. Probably the same pack.
A mixture of feelings ran through him. Relief - and disappontment. But they were gone as soon as they came, and he rolled on down the driveway, whistling again.
His nickname was Ketch. As in, "good Ketch" - a joke he never quite got, really. But the boss came up with it, so naturally he smirked at it, and laughed.
He lived alone in a house up on the east side of the San Gabriels, on a big lot. Okay house. There was a garage underneath, and it was huge. He parked his van in one side of it.
The other half was a storeroom and workshop. There were a few cases of cigarettes in there, but he knew better. Learned that one the hard way. So he had to go out and buy his own, just like everybody else.
That didn't bother him. He had ninety-three thousand bucks in the bank. All his.
He'd earned it.
The boss had a good business going. Selling stuff on the internet. Sex toys. Wholesaler. Sometimes Ketch made custom stuff for it. He'd gotten pretty good at that too.
And he made deliveries. Not tonight, though. He was going to the Digs.
It was a good place to just hang out. People basically kept to themselves, and he liked that just fine. Watching baseball on TV, exchanging nods with the other regulars as they passed by. He was a big Rangers fan. Sometimes he'd shoot pool.
Tonight he had other plans. That explained the relief, or most of it, when he found the spare pack of smokes he bought...
When the clock approached 10 p.m. he got himself up and drove home.
Took a quick shower. Changed the sheets on the bed.
And by eleven, he was fucking Stephanie again, having himself a good ol' time.
They didn't have a standing date or anything. Sometimes a couple months would go by... if he was... busy. They went at it five nights in a row, last winter. Or maybe it had been the winter before that.
She was clean, and discreet. They genuinely liked each other. He was smart enough to tip big, from the beginning. A grand to have her stay the night, and be there for more fun in the morning... and she was worth every penny.
She was gorgeous. Just what he liked. About his age, which was twenty-five. Give or take a year. He wasn't sure anymore. She had stamina...
Ketch, he was in terrific condition. Cut. Ripped. It was a condition of his employment. At least an hour a day on the weights if he was... allowed to reach 'em. He used to hate it, but the results were worth the effort. Hell, he'd gotten used to the buzz-cut too. Had to look respectable, even if he wasn't. Be cooperative. Had to keep The Man off his back. It always worked. Apparently he had an honest face.
Yeeeeah, he was one good-looking son of a bitch. His muscles weren't just for show, either. When he delivered the goods, it was all on him. Get it out quick. And there were other reasons that caused him to be that buff...
He usually couldn't remember what they were, exactly. When he needed to know, he didn't wonder. Then he forgot again. It had been like that for a long time, though. He'd learned to just roll with it.
At that point in his life, Stephanie was just right for him. There when he wanted her to be, so long as he gave her a call before. On rare occasions, she stalled him off a few days. When some conventions came into town, she kept real busy. If he wasn't in the mood to wait, Angie would do. Whatever.
They liked each other, and trusted each other. No expectations. Just a couple of professionals...
She'd pegged him as a working guy right away. Just from looking at him, when he was naked. Ketch always found that amusing. He didn't hook. But if she wanted to think he was a call guy... no harm in it. She'd relaxed around him, and that helped him get even more comfortable with her. And while the sex was always lopsided - he wasn't dumb enough to forget - she gave him the big compliment of being honest whenever she was enjoying it herself.
Worked for him. Made it better still...
They took turns making breakfast. It was on him this time.
She checked in with her service. A nooner was scheduled. Plenty of time to make it home and get ready. He was in a killer mood. Awake, loose as a goose. The trouser snake was satisfied, for now. Quiet. That last romp, less than an hour ago, was just what the doctor ordered.
Stephanie devoured her omelet, or what was his best attempt at one. As she did, she told him about an appointment the week before that just went from bad to worse. And it was funny, no doubt about it. When she was done, he had no idea where it happened, or when, or even what sex the other participants were. That's how respectful she was. Still, it was a damn funny story...
She looked at the clock again, got herself up, and planted a long, deep one on him. Little bits of egg on her tongue, getting lost in his mouth. She laughed at his expression, right after, as he thanked her for the extra "meal". Messed up his hair and picked up her purse, and she was off.
Ketch had another cup of coffee and a few cigarettes. Yawned, scratched, loaded up the dishwasher. Went into his office.
It was in the living room. Along one side, there was a big desk with the computers and printers and the fax machine.
A few orders had come in. He had work to do.
Mostly, it involved having manufacturers ship stuff to people who'd sell it at a huge markup. Dildoes. Toys. Except for deliveries he boxed up himself, he hardly saw the shit...
And he'd clear hundreds of bucks, each time, just for hooking up the buyer and the seller. It was great.
He had an accountant. He paid taxes. Workman's comp, business license... The boss was treated as a silent partner, on paper. Siphoning off most of the profit, which was only fair. Ketch had to keep everything legal. Above suspicion.
Another part of his job used to be the website. Telling the geeks what changes to make. The money wasn't bad, but it took up too much time. When an offer came in, three years ago, he was glad he got the okay to sell it off. Now a check came each month. Six, seven thousand bucks! Eleven, one month. It would keep coming as long as the website was in business - and the new owners were real happy campers. Plus there was more dough coming in from whatever custom stuff people would order. And they paid a lot for the good stuff. The real stuff, made-to-measure. Thick and solid.
Leatherwork took him a long time to learn. Stocks and racks were easy - now. Took him months to get stuff right. Unbreakable. He'd learned to weld, somewhere along the line... well, been taught. Didn't remember the details, though.
It only took him about forty-five minutes to get the current orders all done.
Then he watched soccer on the satellite TV, and made more coffee. Wandered back in and surfed the net, seeing what was new in the industry. Traded e-mails with another smut peddler, and a couple writers. Fellow freaks who liked the weird, hardcore stuff. There were like five people who were seriously into the same tiny niche. He'd gotten into it because of the wild imaginations they had. Especially the artists. Yow -
The laptop beeped. Two o'clock. Putting his feet up, he got himself a fine Cuban-seed cigarillo and stoked it up. He usually gave it about five minutes, before figuring he was free -
But there it was. A different beep - the fax machine. Incoming.
"Hey, boss," he said softly. He stayed put until the transmission was done. Three pages. Three stops -
Wait. They were for today. Usually he'd get instructions for the following night. Then he'd reschedule with Stephanie, if necessary. But sometimes, like now, the right phrases were there. Haul ass. Rush order. Definitely from the boss, too.
Ketch wasn't supposed to hit the road too much before sundown... so he still had time to work out. Looking over the faxed pages, he figured maybe an hour to pick and load. Wouldn't be dark until around seven.
He finished his smoke, and whistled as he headed for the weights. One whole bedroom was full of pro-grade stuff. He turned on the stereo and picked out a Green Day CD.
Arms, today - oh, and he'd better quit putting off his lats. He got busy...
By five-fifteen, he was out of the shower. He threw a pizza in the oven, hopped on the couch and lit a cigarette. Channel-surfed until he found a movie he hadn't seen yet...
Half the pizza ended up in him, and a second beer. Vitamins, ginseng, yohimbe, a little kava. Wired, with the sweet little undercurrent of the alcohol, he wrapped up the rest of the pizza and shoved it in the freezer. Grabbed the fax, and headed downstairs.
In the garage, two sets of stocks sat on tarps. Not done yet. A metal arch was waiting for primer. He'd finally got the welds right, on the tie-rings...
Right then, he had orders to fill. Ketch got some boxes, and packed 'em carefully. Almost out of Powerbars, but an order was coming the next day. Sex oil getting low... he should be good until next week on that. The Winstons were more of a problem - somebody was smokin' hard, somewhere. He could duck into the membership warehouse store, in a pinch.
Then he got some six-gallon water bottles out, set up the hoses and started filling 'em. Had himself a cig, as he swapped full ones for empties.
With the hanging shelves, his van could hold fifty bottles. The order was for four dozen. He started loading 'em up as others got filled. About three days per bottle, times forty-eight - what was that, almost six months? That's a lot of water. All going to the same place, too...
He grinned, as he slid the bottles toward the front. Somebody wouldn't have to go out and get any water too soon. That made it easy to just... stay in. Didn't it though.
When he thought about it too much, he'd get all fuzzy upstairs. He knew he was delivering stuff that people really needed. Water, food. Smokes. That made him feel good. If it saved somebody a trip to get the other stuff at the same time, the sex shit... lubes and rubbers, the rope, all those brushes... well, why not?
Never in his life did he think he'd have so much money saved up. And a new van, in his own name. And he was only twenty-five. Twenty-four? Whatever.
Hungry people gotta eat. He was glad to help...
He loaded up the rest of the bottles, and then the boxes, feeling pretty damn good. Just doing his part.
So he hopped in the van, and double-checked the orders. All set. As he started the van, he threw the papers on the passenger seat and checked the garage door.
The sun was just about to set. He backed out, and rode the brake. Running a hand under the seat...
Found 'em. His spare pack. But... Wait.
Ketch pulled 'em out, and looked.
Nonfilters.
He stared... and laughed. His favorites. "Oh, shit." Shaking his head, with a big smile. "Oh no." Fuckin' boss had wild ideas.
Then he smacked the pack a few times, opened it up. Fired up one of those bad boys gratefully. And looked around.
Nothing different to see. Not that he'd expected... anything, but you never knew.
Damn. Nonfilters, under his seat. Definitely not the spare pack he'd tossed there. He knew what that meant -
He was in trouble. "Shit..." With another long drag, heavy in his lungs, he just had to look at that pack again. Yup. No doubt.
"What's up with this? Who's been in my fuckin' van?" He paused, waiting. Just in case. "Is somebody... here? Huh?" And he laughed again. There was never any answer. He had a feeling the boss was listening. Riding along, as it were.
"What could it possibly mean?" he said, trying not to chuckle. But he knew.
As soon as he saw 'em, it all came back. Every time he found nonfilters there... a kidnapping was gonna take place. Meaning, him. Kidnapped.
Ketch dug it when his route home was changed. Right out from under him - the way it was gonna be, tonight.
He reached behind the passenger seat. Pulled out his carton... The last one he'd bought. He kept it in the van, 'cause cigarettes seemed to disappear when he kept 'em in the house. If he brought more than one extra pack in, they'd always be gone by the time he woke up. And out he'd go, to buy some more. So he'd been keeping his smokes in the van -
The carton was too light. He found only one pack in there...
More nonfilters.
"Muther-fuck," he laughed. His five or six packs were gone. One pack here, one under the seat. He only had a couple of hours before...
That's what it meant. He wasn't going to make it through these two packs before - he was toast!
He rolled down the street, and spun 'em out at the intersection. Nobody else was around. Then he reached for his cell phone...
Greenbud got it on the third ring. "What?"
"Hey, good. You're there."
"What?" he repeated. Yeah, definitely stoned.
"I got a bad feeling," Ketch said, almost giggling.
"Okay."
"Order coming tomorrow. Two things you maybe gotta get. You go and get a pen, right now."
The other guy sighed melodramatically. Rustling sounds. "Okay. I got one."
"Eon-Hump oil. Winstons. Soft pack."
"Oil, and Winstons. That it?"
"Thaassit," Ketch drawled.
"No changes? Passwords all the same?"
"Yup. All the same. Got your keys?"
"Uh-huh." He heard the sound of a long, hard toke on the other end of the line, and grinned harder. "How... bad... is this feeling of yours?" The dude growled the words without breathing. Same thing he always asked.
"No fuckin' clue."
A big, long exhale. "Right."
"Later."
"Later." And click. He hung up. So that was all set. Greenbud would cover for him, if something were to... happen. To him.
"Man," he said dramatically. "I hope I'm just being paranoid." Like hell. "The last thing I need is to get jumped tonight. Way out in the sticks..."
Greenbud would come through. He'd been on the payroll for better'n a year, and he sure as hell wasn't about to blow this gig. Free trailer out back, on a separate dirt-track leading to the road. He didn't go out much, though. Except to score. Pounds of dope at a time.
Great dope. Ketch got a bag off him here and there for the orders. Sometimes a little for Stephanie. He liked drinking better, though.
If he had the chance, he let Greenbud know when he had a bad feeling. Like tonight. When Ketch up and disappeared for a couple days, Greenbud had to come over and handle most of the orders. Finish up any equipment that he could, ship it out and do the deliveries. He grumbled a lot, at times like that, but otherwise he didn't have to do a damn thing. Just sit around and smoke dope. Rent-free, two thousand bucks a month cash, all his bills paid - including his weed allowance, which was up there. Another two hundred bucks a day whenever he covered any of the work. But all he had to do, usually, was keep the phone on. Wait for a call, and fill in on the orders and deliveries... when Ketch was unavailable.
"Fuck, I'm unavailable," he sang to himself, real quiet, as he zoomed up the freeway on-ramp. "Gonna get bushwhacked..."
It was dark when he pulled up to his first stop. Five boxes, which he hid in a shallow pit among the trees. Rope and batteries, a cock-pump, different lubes. Cigs. A whole case of rum. A lot of the food - nuts, dried beef, energy bars.
There, he thought with satisfaction, as he pulled away. No other cars around. Success. And somebody would get what they need to keep going. And then some.
The second delivery was forty miles northeast. Really deserted. Ketch took the access road and pulled up to an old pumphouse. It looked empty enough.
But the false floor came up easily enough. He'd seen no headlights on the road, so he got out and opened the back door. All those Winstons went here. Nipple-clamps... and a toy he was pretty fond of himself, with rolling beads and springs to keep 'em pressing down. Get it around his meat, pull it down a few inches, push it back. Real slow. With plenty of oil. It was insane, how good it felt... He didn't have one. Which was odd, when he thought about it, 'cause he liked it. And he knew what it felt like.
Aw well. Food for here, too. Only two boxes, and a case of beer. That left six boxes of shit for the last stop. And the water.
Lifting the beer, he looked around suddenly. Oh boy. Oh shit, here it comes! But nothing happened.
"Not yet," he said to the beer. "Huh."
There was that one time... He was getting ready to haul a case out from behind the driver's seat and the back doors slammed. The first thrill was gone, right away, 'cause something felt wrong about it. He was handcuffed before he knew it, and the van took off. With him, and his last two deliveries...
And he'd spent a long time in a shitty cabin. Strapped down. Two dozen bottles of water. And it wasn't right, dammit. Worried, the whole time, about what the boss was gonna say. That was rough. But the tickler cut him loose, or the boss finally found his ass. He woke up at home, and never got in any trouble over it. Even got a week off to rest up, with Miguel covering for him. So that was before Greenbud came along. He wondered where Miguel was now...
He never seemed to think about this kind of stuff except when he was out doing deliveries. Lowering the trap door, Ketch nodded to himself and got behind the wheel, turned it around, and headed southeast. The last stop was maybe an hour away.
There was most of a pack left. "Damn," he said, in a real smartass tone of voice. "I need more smokes. Wouldn't it just suck to get grabbed... Way out here..."
But nothing happened to him.
"Maybe I got it all wrong," he taunted. "Shit like that doesn't happen. Not to me." He paused, and waited. "Not tonight..."
He lit up another cigarette and pulled over at the last dropoff point. Big old drainage pipes - and getting all those water bottles hidden in 'em was going to be a royal bitch. Kicking out smoke, he opened the door and started to get out.
His legs - they didn't move along with him. More specifically... his ankles.
"Wha - oh. Oh shit!," he yelled. Real happy, all of a sudden. Whew. "What the fuck is g-going on?"
Kicking didn't move his feet. It felt... like hands, maybe. Strong ones. He looked - ah hah. There were leather gloves, down there. Pulling -
His right boot came off.
As he felt it go... a different emotion swamped him. Confusion. Wait a minute, he wanted to say. Wouldn't matter. Just wait, I don't understand something here -
"What the..." he trailed off, staring at his sock.
Two more gloves took hold of his left arm and pulled it across his belly. Cold metal hit his wrist. Ratcheting sounds -
Handcuffs. Several gloves doing the honors.
"No," he said louder, bouncing hard on the seat. Something familiar about this... but he couldn't quite figure it o-
The door slammed. Leather hands came and curled themselves around the steering wheel and the gearshift -
As the van sped out, Ketch felt his other boot slide off. Taken away. He was busy trying to get his hands free...
At the stop sign, the van turned left. He noticed this too late. "Right!" he said. "Back to the freeway! I'm not supposed to... uh..."
Something hit his foot. Both feet.
No - they were... stroking.
"Shit, oh shit, oh shit," he chuckled. "Lemme go... I'm gonna get... in trouble..."
Then he squeaked, real loud. His socks were being pulled off. And he couldn't get his feet loose...
The fingers were surprisingly soft. Almost oily.
Ketch thrashed all around, roaring with laughter. The van kept on heading north. Or northeast. Wrong way, wrong way...
They kept an iron grip on his ankles. Kept tickling...
After a while, he was swallowing. Water. He looked at the bottle, wondering where it came from -
And he felt the pills, passing through his throat. They'd forced something down him.
But he didn't have time to think about it too much, 'cause they fuckin' attacked his feet again. He wailed and laughed and shook in their grasp. They didn't care. The fingers just kept right on. Holding him, tickling... driving on through the night.
Maybe he'd get pulled over. It had happened once... he thought. Maybe. Yeah - one time. After he was done delivering. No pot in the orders, which was a lucky break. And he sure wasn't carrying, 'cause he wasn't allowed to carry when he was out making deliveries. So the cop ran his license, found nothing to bust him for, and reluctantly let him go.
There was no other traffic out here. He didn't know where he was being taken.
He still had the last order, rattling around in the back. What was the deal w-
And then he got it. Oh, shit. It was so obvious. He'd been kidnapped, with the last order still in the van.
It was for him! Damn.
Four dozen bottles.
"Dammit!" he managed to yell, between laughs. He'd been set up. The cigarettes, in that last order - nonfilters. His brand. Son of a bitch -
He'd been got good. And he was in for it now. Hell, yeah.
Ketch threw his head back and laughed at his sun visor. Really in for it this time.
He laughed harder, at the thought. Joyfully. Almost... gratefully. Oh fuck.
Fuck, yeah.
On to part 2
24sep2001