by Riley, A. M.
what looked like Scotch or bourbon half filling it. Judging by the almost empty
Johnnie Walker bottle standing next to it, I'd guess bourbon. No ice. Now
Peter's a beer drinker. Almost exclusively. It was a wonder he could walk.
Over there on the dining table, I saw a couple boxes and a bunch of old
photographs spread across its surface. Damn if they weren't most of them of
me. Or of me and Peter.
I picked up one that went back to the fishing trip we'd gone on, right after
graduation. In retrospect I could see it all there. The way I looked at him, my
arm draped over his shoulder. The glorious smile on his face as he grinned at
the photographer.
Two horny guys in denial. It made me laugh. “Can't believe you saved
this,” I said to him, tossing the photo back into the box and walking over to the
refrigerator. “You got anything to eat?” I asked.
He looked at me with swollen eyes. “I should have known you'd haunt
me.”
I brought stuff out of the refrigerator and built myself a four-inch tower of
roast beef, ham, and tomatoes. My stomach was rolling and creaking like a
ship at sea. I stuffed half the sandwich in my mouth, chewed, and swallowed it
before I realized that it tasted like mushy paper.
“You got any spicy mustard?” I asked.
Peter laughed into his glass. It wasn't a happy laugh. Then he stood,
pitching off the stool, snatched up the glass and bottle, and staggered into the
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A. M. Riley
living area where he threw himself facedown on the sofa. I rummaged through
his kitchen until I found Tabasco sauce.
Now the sandwich tasted like mushy paper with Tabasco sauce on it.
Gross. I ate it all anyway. My stomach grabbed hold of it. Studied it. Cramped.
“Jesus…” And I ran for the bathroom.
* * * * *
I'd been in the same position many times. Sitting on a pot, waiting for my
insides to deal with whatever poison I'd inflicted on my body. One had been
that time Peter had helped me get clean.
After a few minutes, I heard Peter's stumbling footsteps in the hallway;
sounded like he was running into walls. He stopped outside the open doorway
and stared at me sitting on his toilet. “Ah, memories,” he said. And then he
melted down the wall opposite until he was sitting, legs splayed out to either
side, bottle resting on the wooden floor between them.
My bowels seemed to be taking a rest break, so I reached behind myself
and flushed the toilet.
Peter just sat there, goggling away at me, drunker than I've ever seen him.
“You look like shit, by the way,” I told him. “What the hell is wrong with
you?”
“My best friend died,” said Peter. “The motherfucking son of a bitch.”
I assumed he was referring to me. Pretty big assumption, maybe, because
I haven't been much of a friend to Peter.
“I can explain,” I said immediately.
This cracked him up. “Of course you can.” He drank some more, straight
out of the bottle, then pointed the bottle at me, which made him lose his
balance. Poor Peter was so drunk he couldn't even sit straight. “Nobody can
fuck up bigger than you can, Adam. Nobody. You managed to get a DEA agent
killed, while screwing up a homicide investigation and, may I add, letting me
watch you die.”
Immortality is the Suck
19
“I didn't die.”
“You asshole. You'd even lie about that, you fucker.”
“I didn't die,” I told him. “Somebody screwed up.”
“It's always somebody else's fault, isn't it, Adam? You lost enough blood to
float a boat. You died.” Peter tipped back the bottle and drank the last ounce or
so in there. Then he let the empty fall to the wooden floor and kind of pushed it
away. His hand scrubbed at his eyes. “And now your ghost is fucking with me.”
“You're drunk,” I said. “There's no use talking to you when you're like
this.”
“You're dead,” said Peter. “And there's no use telling you what a son of a
bitch you are while you're like that.” And he lowered his head into his hands.
“So why do you keep telling me?”
Head buried in both hands, he was making some pretty disgusting noises.
Sniffling and snotty and mumbling and he said, “Okay, maybe I've still got
some things to say. Maybe that's why you're here.”
“I told you, Peter. I need your help. They still think I'm dead, so…”
“But you never wanted to hear it, so it's as much your fault as mine…”
“I figure tomorrow morning when the ME finds my body missing and the
bloody corpse on the table there…”
Peter looked up from his hands. “Bloody corpse?”
The cramps were starting up in my stomach again and I bent over,
groaning. “Fuck, Peter, I'm dying here.”
Peter kind of crawled back up the wall, using one hand to pull himself to
his feet. He stood there, swaying, and looking down at me. “Deal with it,” he
said. “I'm going to bed. When I wake up, you'll be gone. By the way, you fucker.
I love you.”
And he staggered off down the hallway. I heard the bedroom door slam.
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A. M. Riley
A cramp reached all the way from my anus to my throat and tried to
disembowel me. Good. I deserved it.
Immortality is the Suck
21
Chapter Four
I spent the next hour or so waiting for my body to dispose of the ill-
begotten sandwich. In between the worst moments, I mulled over the events
leading up to my supposed demise.
Like I told you, I'd been working undercover for LAPD Vice. Specifically, a
long-term assignment in tandem with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms, or ATF. I'd spent the last three years infiltrating the Outlaw
Motorcycle Gang, known as the Mongols. The Mongols were one of Los
Angeles's most powerful OMGs, running drugs and guns from LA to Phoenix to
Texas.
The operation had ended in eighty-six local arrests, with charges ranging
from illegal possession of firearms to rape and murder. I'd received a medal,
handshake from the mayor, five seconds of fame on the local news and an
urgent recommendation that I retire and move elsewhere, before the vengeful
Mongols enacted their promised vengeance.
But I was loath to leave town. For a lot of reasons, one of which was
passed out in the nearby bedroom.
My CI, and the man who had helped me infiltrate the Mongols in the first
place, a certain Leonard, a.k.a Freeway, Chavez, also had reasons to linger in
East Los, despite an OMG death sentence. Some personal, some financial. It
was the financial reasons that he and I had in common.
Freeway and I had been smuggling drugs together for three years. Of
course, it was all part of my cover. I'd never skim off the top or keep a little
something for myself. Of course not. That would be wrong.
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A. M. Riley
Like I said, I figured I was headed for Hell.
A few days back, Freeway had heard of a dude named Starz who was
supposed to be moving a large quantity of meth through Los Angeles. Rumor
was he'd ripped off La Eme, the Mexican Mafia, and now found himself in the
unenviable position of possessing a lot of meth and a lot of cash, with no
connections or pipeline by which to dispose of either. In Southern California
that's like a fox walking among a pack of hounds carrying a bag of scent. Dude
was desperate for someone to take the meth off his hands, transport the payola
back to a bank in Mexico, and distract La Eme long enough for him to escape
in one piece.
The fact that this Starz had such a large quantity of ice, and that there
was, purportedly, several hundred thousand in small unmarked bills out there
in search of a home was of interest to yours truly and my friend Freeway.
It should have been simple. I'd meet with the guy, facilitate a few
connections. Spread a little of his green here and there and, with a small
broker's fee pocketed by yours truly, he'd be well on his way through San Diego
county before the narcotics officers I'd tip off descended and took out the trash.
Given what had gone down, it seemed somebody had misrepresented the
situation. Color me surprised.
None of this explained why Peter would have been there when the meet
went down. Peter was Homicide Special. The proverbial crème de la crème of
detectives. He worked out of Parker and only on high profile or sensitive
homicide cases.
I couldn't think of any reason Peter would have been down in the Marina
while yours truly was meeting a meth distributor.
Obviously it was a setup. But who had set up whom? And why?
I cleaned myself up a bit as I considered my next moves. I needed my bike,
my cell phone, a certain small black book. I splashed water on my face, found
Immortality is the Suck
23
Peter's comb there on the sink, and looked in the bathroom mirror for the first
time. And that's when I got a big shock. 'Cause I wasn't there.
I opened and closed the medicine cabinet door. I held things up to the
glass. The things were there, floating in the air, disembodied, but my reflection
was not.
I was a ghost. What the hell?
But wait. Can ghosts use the can and stink up the place in the process?
Can ghosts fuck skater boys by the Santa Monica pier? Had I imagined that? I
went into the kitchen, where I found the evidence of the mess I'd made
preparing my sandwich. I cleaned it up, thinking about anything I'd ever heard
about ghosts and it was just not adding up.
I peeked in at Peter who was still passed out on his bed. After his parting
words I was loath to wake him.
So, I prowled the condo for a few minutes like the trapped animal I was,
then I went into the living room and switched on the set while I tried to think.
And guess whose murder was being featured on the ten o'clock news? They'd
dug up some old picture of me in my blues shaking hands with the mayor and
they were going on about what a big hero I was. It was a very old picture,
needless to say. None of my contemporaries would have recognized me. They
had a picture of Starz too, looking clean-cut and wholesome in a suit and tie
and they told me that he was an agent for Drug Enforcement.
What a clusterfuck. I was up to my neck in crap. I could see that.
I grabbed Peter's landline up from the end table and dialed a number from
memory.
“Freeway, ' mano. It's Adam. If you're watching the news now…” I was cut
off by a computerized voice. “This mailbox is full.”
I cursed and slammed the phone back into the cradle.
“LAPD has issued these photos,” said the newscaster. And then they put a
picture of one of the two “assailants” up on the screen, and I recognized the
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A. M. Riley
corpse I'd fought with down in the morgue. He was a Richie Ortiz. A “known
associate” of the Mexican Mafia, and last known to be residing in Tijuana,
Mexico, where he was wanted for money laundering and gun running.
According to the news, there was a “citywide” investigation and they wanted
any information anyone could provide about who might have offed me and DEA
agent Armante.
Now, I'm no Rhodes scholar, but even I could see that just calling the
precinct and telling them I wasn't dead was not the way to handle things.
So, I went back into Peter's room and thunked on him a few times. “Hey,
dude. Wake up. I've got a real problem here.”
He moaned. See? How could I be a ghost if I could elicit moans from a
man who was dead drunk? I shook him and he swatted at me but he didn't
seem about to wake up. And, while sitting there, I noticed the framed
photograph on Peter's bedside table.
The picture was of me and Peter, still in our academy days. We were out
on the rifle range and he was looking down at his gun with a sheepish smile
and I had my arm slung around his shoulder, smiling at him. I had no idea
who had taken the picture, but I wondered how they could have snapped that
shot without seeing what was so obviously between us.
It made me remember things, that picture.
I jumped up from the bed. Memories are like snakes. They'll bite you on
the ass. And thinking had never been my strong suit anyway. It was time to
take action.
According to the clock on Peter's microwave, it was only 11 p.m. There
were places in Los Angeles where that was normal business hours. I searched
around the condo and quickly found the keys to Peter's other car and, exactly
where he always kept it, Peter's old service Smith & Wesson. Bullets in the
shoe box in the lower left corner of the closet.
Immortality is the Suck
25
The gun was registered to Peter and if one of its slugs showed up
anywhere it shouldn't, he'd have my head. But you didn't go where I planned
on going without a weapon.
I found a wad of bills in the cookie jar that added up to roughly fifty
bucks, which would have gotten me about five miles if Peter hadn't kept the old
beaten blue Cadillac in his garage with a full tank. As it was, I had enough to
purchase a prepaid cell phone at the nearest service station.
An old canvas windbreaker of Peter's that tugged at the shoulders and a
pair of mirrored shades and I was good to go.
I wanted my bike, but I wouldn't be recognized in this old heap. I wasn't
used to traveling in a cage, though. The old interior smelled like mildewed
upholstery, gunmetal, and the sickening pine air freshener hanging from the
radio knob. I tossed the pine tree out of the window. The wheel was overlarge
and seemed to respond ten seconds after every twist I gave it. It was like flying
a crop duster as opposed to a jet and it took me awhile just to back out of the
garage. As I headed out, the Caddy swayed and careened on the road like the
driver was drunk. Then the soft tires squealed and the tail yawed left as I
turned right onto the freeway, headed south toward my old stomping grounds
and Freeway's home in Boyle Heights.
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A. M. Riley
Chapter Five
Boyle Heights, from the 5, looks like a pretty stretch of little ticky-tacky
boxes, sprinkled with Christmas lights.
And if that's all you see when you look
at it, I suggest you stay on the freeway and just keep driving until you get to
San Diego.
For years Boyle Heights was agricultural land. Acres of frequently flooding
“flats” and the small lump of Mount Washington on the east side of the Los
Angeles river isolated, in the early years, from the growing urban west side.
Recent immigrants and minorities lived there until Boyle and Hollenbeck
bought up the whole thing and developed it. The mayor of Los Angeles built
bridges and for a while the area was opulent and pretty. Those people moved
on, leaving behind crumbling mission-style houses and a new population of
poor and immigrants.
“The Flats” has the highest gang crime rate in Southern California. Here,
the tagging is a serious form of communication and rarely does anyone argue
that “it's an art form.” As I rolled off the ramp, I noticed that the “Mosca”
inscribed on the stop sign there had been sprayed over with a cross and the
name “Charra.” Either a threat or a brag. Charra had either taken down Mosca
or intended to in the near future.
I pulled off the freeway a little north, in the slightly more affluent Mount
Washington area, and let the Caddy roll slowly along the road that skirted the
base of Mount Washington. Stepping-stone residential blocks climbed, one
beige and pink stuccoed square after another, up to the more imaginative
buildings pitching off the top of the mound of earth that gave the area its
Immortality is the Suck
27
name. Due to erosion and bad building codes, those homes teetered overhead
like something from a Dr. Seuss illustration.
I saw no motorbikes, no one wearing colors, and kept to the back streets,
passing though Lincoln Heights, then west on Mission past the medical center
and the county morgue, under the freeway, skirting the RTD and Amtrak bus
yard so that I could creep up on my old stomping grounds.
I could see no one on the streets and most of the homes were dark. A cat's
