“I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.” He hit pretty good for an old guy. I fell over on my side.
“I’m sorry, damn my temper. Damn.” Lifting me back onto my knees, he started to dust me off. Something hard hit something soft. His body went rigid. His hands stopped moving. He hit the pavement with a thud.
Mikayla stood over him, a bloody brick in her hand.
Harry Clemmit, that was his name, or at least that was what his ID said. He was a Federal Marshal assigned to Homeland Security. He had eight hundred and forty-two dollars, a VIP card from Fantasia’s bikini club and not much else. He was handcuffed on the bed with a towel full of ice on his head. Mikayla sucked on a cigarette. I sucked on a Coke, wishing it was a scotch.
I had chosen the Rose Motor Lodge in Eagle Rock. They took cash and didn’t ask any questions. It was a small court of pre-war single story bungalows. His wallet and half-drunk quart of Four Roses whiskey sat on the coffee table. His Remington 12 gauge and Kevlar vest rested by the door. His.44 Bulldog was in my belt.
Harry’s lids slid open when we dumped an ice bucket full of cold water on him. Eyes darting, he tried to place himself. Navigating his way back from whatever dark place he had been, he locked on me.
“You are one sad sack dumb fuck, convict. Kidnapping a cop?”
“You look up my record?” I sipped the Coke.
“Two time loser, yeah, I looked you up. I got a sack of hammers at home that are smarter than you.” He tried to sit up, pain swimming, he leaned back down.
“This here is strike three, the big bitch. I have nothing to lose by killing you.” Another sip.
“Kill a cop, ride the needle. Is that what you want, son?” He was fighting his ornery nature to try and sound warm and fatherly. “I figure maybe I can help straighten this out, if you give me the chance. Un-cuff me, put our heads together, see what we see.”
“I don’t think so.” Setting down the Coke, I pulled the.44. He relaxed, it was as if he had seen this moment coming a long time back and he was almost relieved to finally have it here. Pushing the barrel against his head, I pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell on an empty chamber with a hollow click.
Harry was in the trunk as we drove across town. The empty gun trick had opened the floodgates of truth. He was on the pad to the Russians. He had convinced his bosses they could help him fight terrorists, that was all it took to give him free rein. Mention the T word and nothing else mattered. The Israelis worked for Mossad. The Russian mob funneled them cash. Cash used to fight terrorists. Again the big T. He told me the Israelis had Gregor and Anya held in a safehouse in Chatsworth. That’s where we were headed.
Back in the motel, I had cleaned my shoulder. Whatever Adolpho’s woman had used had done the trick, the flesh was purple with bruising but no sign of infection. I turned the shower to scalding and let the water pound down on me. I hurt from head to toe and the water did little to ease it. What I needed was a week in bed. What I got was a head full of broken glass and rusty nails. Jason B. Manny. Piper. Faces flooded my mind. So many friends lost. It had started with a simple lap dance, and a girl I fell for. That was a life ago. Now she and my last friend were both in the hands of killers and it was on me to get them back.
“These men are very good at what they do, very good,” Mikayla said as we purred up the freeway.
“Fuck them.” I didn’t look at her, we hadn’t spoken ten words since we left Piper’s.
“Look, I’m…” She was stumbling and unsure. “I’m, I didn’t mean to… Your friend, the stripper…”
“Her name’s Piper.”
“Yes, Piper… Sometimes, I wish it was all different. Not sometimes. No, always I wish, but this is who I am.” She went silent, eyes on the hills sweeping past us. Whatever fantasy I had in the desert was gone. Mikayla wasn’t ever going on a date. She wasn’t the kind of girl you took walking on the beach at sunset. The place those possibilities lived had died in her miles back down her twisted road. Maybe they had died for me, too, only I was too thick to admit it.
The sun was cresting the mountains as the new day broke over Chatsworth, redneck hell. Home of the peckerwood jury who kicked free the cops who beat Rodney King and set off the LA uprising.
At a filling station, I called Manny. He was still at the club. “Call the Russians. Ask them what it will take to get Gregor back.”
“It may take time, where are you?”
“I’m at the Rose Motor Lodge, call me when you reach them.” I gave him the number and hung up. From the parked car, I could see the dirt road Harry had mapped for us. The convenience store coffee tasted bitter. We watched the road. We waited.
Ten minutes later, a white van rolled down the mountain. We ducked down as they flew past us and onto the freeway. Manny had sold me out again. I knew he would. I was past caring. One day I might kill him, but not this day.
“I need a drink,” Harry said when we opened the trunk. His face was a bit red, but other than that, he looked better than when we shoved him in there. “Goddamn, convict, I’m six feet down and waiting for the dirt. Give me a drink or shoot me.” His hands, cuffed behind his back, were starting shake with building tremors.
Unhooking the cuffs, I handed him the Four Roses. He sat up in the trunk, back pressed against the inside of the fender, and took one long pull off the bottle.
“You ever listen to Dolly Parton?” He hit the bottle again.
“I hate country music.”
“Your loss, convict, your loss.” His trembling stopped with the whisky. Climbing out he looked up the dirt road. “Sure you want to do this? These are some mean mother truckers.”
“Let’s go.”
“It’s your neck and your razor.” He led us around the bend. At the end of the dirt road, a Quonset hut sat surrounded by oaks and scrub. Mikayla circled around the back, through the trees. I gave her a few minutes before moving to the front door. Pinning myself against the wall, I leveled the 12 gauge at Harry’s chest. His fist pounding on the metal door echoed into the quiet morning. Heavy footsteps on concrete. The peephole darkened.
“Open up, the Russkies sent me, we got trouble.” Sweat beads popped on Harry’s forehead. A steel bolt slid and the door started to open. Shoving Harry aside, I slammed into the door. It flew open, the man behind it was quick, instead of toppling, he used my force to propel himself into the shadows. I was stumbling into the room when he fired the first burst. Flame jumped out of the darkness. The doorway I had been in was filled with the buzz of lead. Falling to my belly, bullets ripped holes of light into the wall behind me. Aiming at the flame, I pulled the shotgun’s trigger. It slammed into my fucked up shoulder, sending shivers of pain with every shot. I pulled the trigger as quick as I could, the Remington’s smooth auto load kept the shots coming. I didn’t stop until the breach locked open. All went silent. Dust motes and gun smoke drifted in the shafts of light piercing in through the bullet holes. Setting the Remington down, I pulled my Beretta and crawled towards the shadowed form. Buckshot had taken the Israeli’s head off at the jaw line. Bloody pulp smeared the wall behind him. I swallowed and kept moving.
Stepping into a back room that had been converted into a kitchen, I slipped on something wet and almost fell. The floor was slick with blood. A man lay on his side, his hands locked on his throat where he had unsuccessfully tried to stop his life from flowing out of a razor cut.
Through a door on the left, I found Mikayla leaning over Gregor. In the small windowless room, he sat on the floor. She cut the plastic cuffs off his hands and feet. When she pulled off the hood covering his face, he blinked against the light, then looked up at me.
“How’s it going, boss?”
“Been better, you?”
“Been worse.” Standing up, he almost fell over, grabbed the wall for support.
“Sit.” In the corner, I found his clothes. I pulled on his jeans as gently as possible, he didn’t scream but I could tell he wanted to. Bruises, gashes and rips left no part of his body unharmed. I had to cut the top off his left boot to fit it on over his broken toes.