I showered, thinking about what Wilma had said. She was smart and she did have the inside dope on Stadanko and Chekka. But was she so greedy she wasn't thinking straight? Did she really believe it would be that easy to steal money from wheels like them? Or maybe it was the crank talking and she always went on like that when she was high.
No sense waiting until this evening, I thought, and drove over to talk to Nap. She had talked to him at the club the other night about something. If he was in on this thing it would mean something different. Nap wasn't nobody's joke, and he did have reason to want to move on Stadanko and the Little Hand. About fifteen minutes later, I pulled to the curb of his Mount Olympus pad on Cyclops Road. There were tall cypress trees in a half circle in front of the house, and he'd repainted the joint recently in a orange-brown with dark green trim. The house was built in what Nap had told me was called Greco-Roman with touches of Assyrian.
Whatever the hell that meant. It did have these large columns and looked like it should be in one of those old school Steve Reeves Hercules movies.
Like I figured, his maroon Lincoln Town Car with its gold wire rims was in the driveway. Unless he had to be somewhere, the big man wasn't an early riser. I knocked but there was no answer. I figured he was probably in there pipin' his boyfriend Pablo, the color consultant. On the lawn was the morning paper. Maybe Davida got some fame at last and her murder was mentioned in the Metro section.
"Nap," I yelled, looking up toward the second-floor bedroom. Nothing. I listened closely but didn't hear any moaning or groaning or little Pablo squealing with joy.
"Nap," I called out again. Still no answer. In the back of the house was a pool and a guesthouse which used to be the maid's rooms in the old days. I wasn't so broken down I couldn't manage to get over the iron gate, I said to myself, thinking about how Wilma had mocked me. Yeah, she was a hard-ass bitch, but there was something about her. I landed on the other side expecting Bruno, Nap's bull mastiff, to come running. The dog knew me so I wasn't sweatin' him taking a nip. Only the dog wasn't around.
I tried the back door and it was locked. I knocked loudly but got no answer. The curtain was closed behind the sliding glass door and I knocked there too in case the lover boys had fallen asleep in the rumpus room. Then I turned and walked over to the guesthouse. The door was open. Inside, chairs and a table had been tossed around, and the pictures were hanging lopsided on the walls.
Danny Deuce was in his Nike sweats, no shirt, no shoes. He was laying with his head against the wall and bent to one side. Over his legs was a dude in a suit, a gun in his hand and a gash in the side of his skull. His blood had splattered on the back of his coat and the cream carpet.
The metal rod in Danny's hand had the cat's blood on it, I guessed. I pulled the man off. His eyes had that vacant look, telling me that the renter was gone. Danny was breathing and I didn't see any holes in him, though there was one in the wall near him.
"Ugh," he said after I got him stretched out on the couch and slapped him awake.
"That one of Chekka's boys you wasted?"
"Motherfuckahs come bustin' in this mornin' while I was sitting on the stool, man." Danny sat up, rubbing the back of his head.
"The other day upset 'em, huh?"
He finally focused on me, blinking. "Yeah, Nap said you and him had to set these fools straight at the club. They rolled up and I could hear them arguing in the front." He pointed towards his brother's house. I guess they didn't know I was stayin' here and I jumped them." He looked around. "My piece is here somewhere."
"Where's Nap?"
"He ain't here?"
Danny had keys to the main house and we looked all over it. No Nap.
"Aw, snap," Danny said as we stood in the kitchen. He hit the table with his fist. I noticed the phone had been ripped out of the wall next to him. "When we was tusslin' I think one of them said something about takin' Nap to the dump." He looked at me, worry for his brother on his face. "You got any idea where they're talking about?"
I didn't, but I knew who would. I found a working phone in the upstairs bedroom and dialed the number.
"Okay, yeah, I am grateful, is that what you wanted to hear?" This woman was gonna kill me yet.
I apologize for giving you a hard time before, Zelmont," Wilma said sweetly on the other end of the line. "You sure you don't want me to call the police?"
"Naw, that'll just bring more attention than we need right now. Me and Danny should be able to do this." The youngster was all up on me, breathing his stale breath in my face.
"Call me when you get back, baby."
"What she say, man?" Danny blurted, grabbing my arm. I tried to ignore him. I figured she was playing me, but it seemed to be worth the ride, at least for now. "I will." I hung up. "Wilma says Stadanko's Shindar Enterprises uses the landfill out at the Sunshine Canyon dump in the Valley. She thinks they have a facility there too."
Danny had found his gun, one of those sleek plastic numbers with about a hundred bullets in the clip. Legally, civilians could only buy a 16-round magazine in California, but Danny's pieces were always off-market, untraceable, and street lethal. He was holding it tenderly, like it was his girl's tit. "You know where this place is?"
"Yeah." I didn't tell him that I knew where a lot of the garbage dumps were around Los Angeles, or why I knew. My father had been a garbage man for the city. The father who never was around much, never came to my games or got on the phone to tell me he liked what I'd done.
When I was a teenager I'd go to the city depot where the garbage trucks were, trying to catch a glimpse of him. But the trucks were always out real early in the morning, and by the time I'd get there after school and practice, he'd be gone. A few times I cut class and rode the buses for hours to the various dumps, hoping to see him when they came to drop off their loads. It took me a while to realize each truck didn't always go to the dumps, that some of them unloaded into larger trash-hauling trucks that drove out to the sites.
The one thing I got from my dad was a talent for womanizing. But it ain't like he taught me that at his knee. I only heard about him and his other women from my fucked-up Uncle Nate when he was sipping on some Canadian Club, eating up my mother's grub.
The two of us went downstairs. We had to do something with the body of the chump Danny had killed. After all, he was dressed and ready for burial.
"Man, we gotta jet," Danny screamed, "we gotta save Nap."
"Be cool, Danny, we don't want to raise no ruckus right now. We just lucky y'all's play period didn't get the cops swoopin' down here. They ain't gonna kill Nap right off. They want him alive, they want to teach him a lesson."
"Why you say that?"
"Chekka needs the club."
"He can get some refugee Polack motherfuckah to run the joint."
"No, that would be too obvious. Come on, we got to move the body." I wasn't sure I was telling the truth, but I wanted to make sure Danny was on point and not trippin'. Last thing I needed now was to be hauling around this dead white boy in my car with home-boy looking to bust a cap on the next mother from Herzegovina he thought might have snatched his big brah.
There was no choice but to stick the corpse in the back of my Explorer. Good thing the rear side and hatch windows were tinted. I backed down the driveway as Danny unlocked the gate. Inside the guesthouse we sandwiched the dude in some blue plastic tarp I found in the toolshed. Then I wrapped a couple of oily rags and some duct tape from the shed around his head. Good thing it was a weekday so most people were off to work. We carried the dude into my ride, me hoping to hell this sucker didn't leak on my carpet.
I pulled out. Danny locked up the house and gate. Everything looked normal enough on the outside. I got to the 101 freeway, taking it north over the hill. Danny was on pins in the seat next to me, his gun under the front seat. I made him put it there; otherwise he was gonna keep it in his waistband. I swear, these young punks don't know anything but the shit they see on cable and CD covers. He was going to blow his nuts off before we got to North Hollywood.