The Concierge – Chapter Fifty Six

Juan is at the concierge desk wondering what exactly happened to Ms. Nicola, his thoughts of curiosity are interrupted by the concierge phone ringing.

“You have reached the Sapphire tower, Juan speaking, Good evening,” he answers.

“Juan, soy Pablo, why aren’t you answering your phone,” says Pablo on the other end of the line. Juan realizes that he has left his mobile on silent ever since he went over to Anna’s apartment.

Looking at his mobile, he finds several missed calls from all three of his daughters, some messages from them and one from Anna. Strange enough he opens the voice message from Anna first.

Outside the bar, Pablo is at a payphone speaking to Juan, he is about to tell him about Anna, when he is interrupted by a tap on his shoulder.

“I’ll call you back”, says Pablo , he puts the phone down as he turns around to face Anna.

Juan looks at the phone and shrugs his shoulder before placing it down and proceeding to listen to Anna’s voice mail. She starts out uneasy, scared and he wonders if something bad is happening to her as she records this. Her message is about her past, how she came to be who she is. The message is shocking but at the same time very sad, but it doesn’t begin to prepare him for what the end will be like.

“ I am tired of this life, it has been days, weeks, months and years of endless abuse and humiliation, you cannot even begin to imagine some of the things that these so called clients ask me to do when they have paid for my services. It has been 6 years and I am exactly where I started , with nothing to show for it except for bruises and the money that I was able to send back to my family. My father’s  debt is now cleared but there is no way I can go back to my family in Moscow, but there is also no way I can continue to live this life. I am still indebted to Salvatore for him having sorted out my legal residency papers and US passport application, I am not leaving this life anytime soon unless I do it my own way. The last few weeks with you have been the best I have ever had and I want them to be the last memories I carry with me before I leave. Thank you and I love you.”

Pablo listens as Anna tells him everything about her past, he feels sorry for her, she weeps and sobs as she explains to him some of the hardest times she has ever had to endure. Not sure what to do to console her, it turns out it he can do nothing, suddenly without any notice; Anna pulls out a small gun and shoots herself in the temple at the left side of her head.

Her lifeless body drops down onto the cold concrete pavement as Pablo stares in shock, within minutes passer bys have gathered around the scene and sirens can be heard in the distance.

Juan stands up and walks around the lobby, thinking about Anna’s life and her message, he steps out to breathe in some fresh air and is stunned to see several police cars with their sirens loud and bright speed past him, not far behind them is a speeding  Ambulance with even louder sirens.

Caroline is standing at her window in her bedroom watching the cars pass by below , she spots 2 police cars and an Ambulance with their lights shining red and blue and their sirens blowing loudly in the dead of the night speeding on the street below.

She thinks of Nicola and how an ambulance and some police cars must have speeded to reach her when word of her assault was dispatched to them. She sighs as she walks over to her bed and sits down, just then her phone rings and it is Randy.

“Hey babes,”he says, “Sorry I was caught up with work,”he lies.

“it’s allright,”she says, “Nicola’s nurse is an angel, such a comfort,” she adds.

“So what are you doing?” he asks walking down the street from Sonya’s building he feels a certain craving, the weather was getting colder and he craved a little more of the warmth Caroline had shown her earlier that afternoon.

“Every one is sleeping.Nicola is in and out of it, because of the meds she is taking and Michelle has gone to sleep.”she answers.

“Can I come see you?”, he asks as he turns around to see if that Hispanic guy is still at the building,something about him. He shrugs it off and says, “ I miss you, I just wanna hold you.”

She blushes as she thinks of the love making session they had that afternoon. “Come over, I will let you in. Nicola won’t be getting up and Michelle, well she is just the nurse and my business really shouldn’t be her business.”

“Great, I’ll be there in 15 mins,” he says as he gets into a cab he has just stopped and directs the driver to Sapphire tower.

He reaches there and walks up to Juan, who has just got off the phone with Caroline who had informed him that she would be receiving a guest by the name of Randy and that he should let him up.

As Randy walks up to him Juan asks him to sign the visitor log, he write down his name and shows him his ID card – Brandon Jeffries.

He lets him into the elevator and walks back to his desk to find that Ms. Emily and her cousin Josh, have returned from an evening from outside. With them is another gentleman, “You know the drill, you need to sign in every one who comes through,” says Juan. A drunk Emily proceeds to log in their guest’s name when her heart stops when she sees a copy of Brandon’s ID on the table near the log book and on it she recognizes his name and signature as she quickly glances at which apartment he is visiting.

Strange enough she sobers up and doesn’t react as wildly as she normally would. They log in and head up to their apartment.After Josh and their cousin Peter have settled in to bed, she excuses herself to go downstairs in the pretence that she forgot to pick up a couriered parcel that Juan had received on her behalf.

She gets into the elevator and quickly presses the button to Caroline and Nicola’s apartment floor.She gets out, her heart beating wildly and her breath unsteady. She walks over and she rings the bell.

Having stealthily snuck in Randy into her bedroom, they are on her bed kissing and caressing when they hear the door bell. Caroline jumps  up and rushes to open the door with Randy right behind her. She opens the door to find a disheveled looking blonde girl at the door. Randy looks over from behind Caroline’s shoulder only to be greeted by a pair of hands coming for his neck in a bid to strangle him while the words “You fucking Bastard” ring out loudly in the silent apartment.

Ahmet is at a bar attending the opening of a new bar partially owned by his business partner Salvatore. Even though he was his partner, he did not approve of some of his other businesses, he looks over at Salvatore’s table full of whores and so called business men and is disgusted at this line of business.

He thinks about the lifestyle these dirty people lead when he thinks of the wrong path that he was about to go down earlier that day with Miguel.

Walking into the master bedroom, he could hear the shower running and he can not resist his urges, his pants grow tight as his boner grows bigger. Standing at the door way, the showers turns off and Miguel comes out rubbing a towel around his ears while he holds on tight to the one wrapped around his waist. He looks up to see Ahmet with a strange look in his eyes, something so different about him, he doesn’t recognize Ahmet with this look in his eyes but he does recognize the feeling growing stronger in his heart – fear.

Fighting his urges and the demons inside Ahmet looks at Miguel’s thin body standing half naked in front of him. Apart of him wants to pick him turn him around and lay him on the bed, the other part wants to kick him out.

“is everything okay” asks Miguel as he stops drying his chest with the towel that was drying his ears. He comes closer to Ahmet and places a hand on his arm. Ahmet flips  he pushes Miguel away, he throws Miguel’s clothes on him and screams at him to get dressed and quickly and get out.

“Hurry up, wear your clothes quickly,”he shouts. A frightened Miguel rushes and stumbles as he puts on his clothes item by item. Ahmet has moved to the kitchen and is screaming and cursing in Turkish “I don’t want to see you here, get out, get dressed and get out,”his voice sounds like an angry beast. Miguel hears glasses , plates and eggs breaking as he quickly puts on his t shirt back wards and with an unbuckled pair of pants, he rushes out past the kitchen and out the door. He runs out of the building and onto the street , he doesn’t know how long and where he was running to until he turns a corner and bumps into a woman.

His thoughts are interrupted when he finds that most of the people from the bar have moved to the outside of the club. It sounds like a crowd has gathered and he can see the lights of police cars outside, he walks out to find that nearby a large crowd has formed and yellow tape has been put up to keep the people away from something. He pushes through the crowds to the front to see what the problem was.

He reaches right in time to see the coroner cover the face of a blonde curly haired woman who lay there clearly dead. He puts a hand on his mouth when he realizes that it was one of Salvatore’s girls – Anna.