by Riley, A. M.
fifties. “Thanks, Alberto.”
He slipped the money off the table with the expertise of a sleight of hand
card shark.
I slid out of the booth and picked up my helmet. “Let's roll.”
The hunger had abated somewhat as I'd drunk the coffee, but it was
starting to blaze high again. Albert, preceding me through the restaurant,
smelled better than a raspberry torte. Walking out of Tips, I brushed by a
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couple of young men slouching by the glass doors and I could smell their
blood. Young, bright, fiery. Their low burning lust like cayenne pepper. One of
the boys lifted his gaze to meet mine. Dark blue eyes with dark lashes.
The dual impulses to grab him and either fuck him or sink my teeth into
him were strong and equally compelling.
I was able to get myself across the lot to my bike and jam on my helmet
before I gave in to that impulse. Alberto flashed me a smile as he passed and
we pulled out of the lot, our long forks swinging right as we went.
It felt good to have my bike between my legs. The vibrations up my spine,
the ache in my kidneys as the entire body of the bike fought my control. It
distracted me from the hunger, gave me focus. The road rolled with a definable
texture under me and Albert and I sped up as we climbed onto the black velvet
of the well-maintained stretch of Sunset.
I followed him up the Crescent Heights mountain pass and Mulholland
Highway as it wound upward toward the stars and the homes of other
luminaries. We circled a home and dropped down a steep dirt track behind it
where an old shed, a camper trailer, and what looked like a small speedboat
circled a dried grass clearing.
Albert led me behind the camper and to a house trailer up under an oak
tree.
I climbed off, trying to clear my head of the heady smell of Albert; I
motioned toward a clump of bushes some fifty feet away. “Gonna take a leak.”
Albert had sat on an aluminum folding beach chair and appeared to be
rolling a joint on the threadbare knee of his black jeans. He waved me off.
I took a piss, managed to pull my brain together. If I'm good at anything,
it's dealing with cravings. Seems I've spent my whole life fighting one or
another. I was practically celibate in the Marines, and then there were the
drugs. I said a little serenity chant to myself, figuring it was probably the first
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time anyone had done that over a quart of blood, and found my way back to
where Albert sat, smoking.
He gestured toward another low beach chair and handed me the doobie,
watching as I took a drag. He looked a little testy. “You took your time.”
“Sorry.”
He looked me up and down.
“I was just thinking,” I said.
“Man, you should know better,” he said.
* * * * *
Albert isn't gay. There are no gay bikers. At least no live ones, as he would
often gladly remind me. But Albert doesn't mind getting wasted and mutually
jerking off another guy.
So we got high and did that a couple times. Lying on a ratty old blanket
under the branches of the California oak, our jeans down around the tops of
our boots, knees spread, Albert's ringed fingers flying up and down my dick.
From where we lay, I could see the stars. They seemed to sort of sway in
the breeze. Or maybe that was the effect of Albert. Humming some tune,
occasionally throwing a few Spanish words in here and there. “Oh sí,
Demonio…”
Hey, you romantics are protesting. What about Peter?
What, are you kidding? Have we met? I'm not a nice man. Excuse me if
you thought otherwise.
Well, okay, I'll admit that at one point, when Albert's thick thumb was
painting circles around the head of my cock and he was whispering
obscenities, his sweat and blood in my nose, there was a moment there when I
wished it was Peter's hand on me. But, then, maybe that was just because
Peter knows best how to touch me there.
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But it's just sex. Hell, it's not even that. It's release. And when it was over
I just lay there feeling the drift of the marijuana and the smell of Albert, his
sticky hand lying across my exposed lower belly, his dark cock limp and warm
in my palm, and a slithering serpent of a thought surprised me. I mean
nobody, absolutely nobody, was going to care if one less biker is on this earth
come tomorrow morning. Right? Albert, who had undoubtedly raped, thieved,
pillaged, and possibly killed his way through the world and had only achieved
some sort of redemption through his work with the federal marshals was
certainly not going to leave behind weeping widows and children.
And his blood was as enticing as the smell of warm chocolate wafting from
a Ghirardelli's.
Nobody would care if he disappeared.
Nobody but Peter.
So I sat up, jerked my pants on, slicked my hair back with both hands,
and said, “I need to sleep. Can I crash in the trailer?”
He had out his papers and was busy rolling another spliff. He nodded.
The back of the trailer was completely dark, enclosed with heavy curtains.
I wouldn't even have to ask Albert to take care opening windows. I was just
nodding off when the prepaid cell phone rang.
Who had this number besides Whitey? I flicked it on without greeting.
Just listened.
“Adam?” Peter's voice. “You son of a bitch, I know you can hear me.”
I told you he's like my Jiminy Cricket, right? I should have said he's like
my fucking mother. “How the hell did you get this number?”
“I found the phone while you were in the shower.”
Sneaky bastard. Of course, if I'd known I would have tossed the phone,
but now it was my one tie to Whitey and, possibly, Ozone and the blood.
“Sometimes you really piss me off, Peter,” I said.
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“The feeling's mutual, asshole. Somebody stole your bike from impound,
by the way.”
“Did they?”
“You should know the plates are in the system by now.”
“Good. I hope you catch the goddamn bastard. Speaking of plates, you get
a feed on those I gave you?”
“Black Hummer was stolen from a valet parking lot at the Dorothy
Chandler. We found it, on fire mind you, abandoned by the side of the 2.”
Near Glendale, then. My memory began recovering the names and
locations of every meth distributor I knew around that area.
“And another body was snatched from the morgue.”
“Wow, really?” On San Fernando road, near the railroad tracks, and just a
block or so away from the 2 to 210 interchange, had been a house where
Freeway and I had frequently partied with a former Mongol top gun, Eric
Juarez. “Geez, Peter, they really should get better security on the morgue. Next
thing you know the Times is going to be demanding an investigation.”
Peter blew a fuse. “Adam, what the fuck are you doing? Stan expected you
to come in tonight and I've had to hold him off.”
“Thanks. I needed a little
more time.”
“Time for what?”
“You know the minute I walk into the station I'm as good as dead.”
A silence. I could feel him somehow at the other end of the line. I was
surprised by a powerful tug of longing, like tendrils reaching from my gut and
though the phone line toward him. I struggled not to disconnect and throw the
phone out into the brush.
“You coming back here once you've done whatever the fuck you think
you're doing?”
How could I go back? I was dead. “Sure,” I said.
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He heard the lie, of course. “You owe me. I have a right to know what's
going on.”
Damn him. He knew just when to play that card. “We were right. There's a
new gang trying to establish themselves in the meth trade.” I searched my
discarded shirt and found the pack of cigarettes. “I think my CI might have
been working with them too, damn his sorry ass.” I lit the cigarette and found a
dirty coffee cup to use as an ashtray. “ And…and maybe they're trafficking in
stolen blood. We have any reports of blood banks being hit recently?”
“I thought of that. Nothing has been reported.”
I considered this bit of information. “They have to be getting it
somewhere.”
“You're assuming the donors are alive.”
“The blood still is viable, Peter. The donor had to have been alive. At least
when it was given.”
His voice sounded thick when he said, “That doesn't paint a pretty
picture.” He was right; the thought of some sicko draining people while they
were still alive was pretty awful. The fact that it still sickened Peter was a
measure of the man. “Do I want to know how you knew the blood was what you
called 'viable,' Adam?”
“Nope.” I exhaled and flicked ash into the coffee cup.
“Are you smoking?” he asked. You see? Like my fucking mother. I handled
him exactly as I had always handled her. I simply did not answer.
“Adam…” Christ, how could Peter's voice speaking my name prick at me
like it did? “I got the techs to clear your apartment. They let me have your
clothes. So…I found room in my garage.”
“You didn't have to.”
“Your death certificate arrived this morning. And the disbursement
papers. A pension comes to your next of kin. Since that was me…”
Fuck.
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“I think I'll just keep depositing the checks in your account. I've got a
power of attorney and I've gotten them to issue a new debit card. The pin is my
birthday. I'll…send it to you when you tell me where you are.”
Fuck fuck fuck. “Thanks. When I decide where I am I'll tell you.”
“Or you could come by and pick it up,” he said. “I'm home now.”
Breathing. His, I think. “Listen, Peter, I haven't slept in days, and I was
about to crash.”
“Right. So you've found a bed?”
“A friend is putting me up.”
“Oh.”
Oh, Christ, I knew what he was thinking now. And he was right, in a
fashion. It made me feel shitty all over again.
“I'll call you,” I said, and hit the disconnect before I could stop myself.
Then I turned the phone off and stuffed it under a pillow. I lay there, feeling the
sun rising, but not feeling guilty. No way. Or lonely. I closed my eyes and the
sex and the pot wrapped thick fingers around my brain and I passed out.
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Chapter Twelve
The hunger woke me.
Actually, a really fucked-up dream woke me. Full of coyotes talking like
Carlos Castaneda, bloodied goats, and a border patrol guard smoking a thick,
hand-rolled joint and telling me to bend over.
No, wait, that had really happened.
Anyway, I woke chewing my pillow, my hands like claws, raking at the
mattress and absolutely no qualms about tearing Albert's head off and drinking
directly from his gushing aorta. Thank God he wasn't in the camper. Though I
didn't thank God at that moment. I ranted and pounded on the walls of the
trailer and tore through the tiny refrigerator, finding nothing but making a
helluva mess in the process.
In a cupboard over the sink, I found Albert's supply of bourbon and
hopelessly tried to numb myself with that until the sun set and the sides of the
trailer cooled and I could put on some clothes and go out into the empty circle
of earth where nothing but traces of oil marked the spot where Albert had had
his bike.
It was weirdly eerie that he shouldn't be there. At the time I couldn't
exactly place why. Except my roll of money was untouched in my pocket and
Albert was never one to walk away from wads of cash.
My cell phone rang. “Peter, fuck off,” I said, before I heard Whitey's voice.
“Uh, I know it's been more than eight hours, man, but I tried to call
earlier.”
“What do you have?”
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“I don't know who you are, and I don't want to, but this Ozone dude is bad
news. I think I should get paid more. Just because of the risk factor if they find
out I told you.”
I'd show him a “risk factor,” I thought to myself. “Where are you?”
“Th…the s-s-same place,” he said. “Are you okay, man? I mean, it's just
business, right?”
My voice sounded weirdly serpentine in my own ears. “Yess. In an hour,
then.” I disconnected. The first star had appeared in the east when I pulled my
bike back onto Mulholland and headed south again toward Los Angeles.
* * * * *
There was something eternally damned about the Tips, I thought.
Unchanging and unchangeable despite the passage of time in the world around
it. Eternally tacky, cheap, and tawdry. It was a bad advertisement for
immortality, I thought, standing at the doors and looking around the
restaurant for Whitey.
The little shit wasn't there. I waited about thirty minutes, drinking coffee
faster than the waitress could pour it, her arm extended fully as if keeping her
distance as much as possible, eyes wide when she stared at me from the
corners, then quickly looking away.
I still needed to piss, it seemed, because my bladder became suddenly
urgent. I went into the men's room and was standing at the urinal when I
smelled the blood.
Whitey was stuffed into a stall, his body curled up like a ball of pale,
bloodless taffy. The holes, I found with my searching fingers, over his heart this
time. I stuffed his wrist in my mouth, but the blood was cold and putrid. I spat
it out and backed away from the body, only noticing as I exited the bathroom
that I had blood on my hand where I'd wiped my mouth.
Several faces gaped at me from surrounding booths as I bolted for the
door and my bike.
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The smell of Whitey had only made it worse, and the hunger was a high-
pitched whine in my head. All I could think about was moving and getting. I
toured the city, heading toward Hollywood and places I thought I might be able
to find someone who wouldn't notice if I maybe sucked on their neck a little.
Maybe somebody who would even take some money from me for the privilege.
Okay, I wasn't thinking straight.
It was like prickly heat under my skin, a taste of metal in my mouth. I
passed strangers walking Sunset and it was like driving through a bakery.
On Vine I veered right and saw the Dunkin' Donuts sign. It was a cop
hangout, so I should have been watching out for cops, but I remembered how
the sugar always helped the jones when I was hooked on coke and my wheels
carried me there out of habit and hope.
I chose the most ghastly, glazed, cholesterol-saturated doughnut in the
case and a cup of coffee. It helped. It really did. I sat and waited for the ensuing
drama in my belly but the doughnut didn't appear to have enough real food
value to cause disruption. Guess sugar and fat were okay.
I thought of Twinkies and my mouth watered.
“Can I get you anything else?” asked the girl behind the counter. She was
young, pink, and dusted with sugar. My mouth watered even more. I saw her
respond to what was probably my ravenous look, with a little bounce and
blush. That blood in her cheeks.
Christ, I hadn't given a woman the once-over in years.
“No,” I said, getting the hell out of there so quickly I almost tripped over
the threshold going out.
There was construction all the way down Fountain during the day, but at
night only the orange cones, backhoes, and flatbeds loaded with pipe remained.
I felt safer near the big machines than near pedestrians, and jogged west. On
my right was the new Motion Picture Academy Archive building. I remembered
when the AIDS Healthcare offices were set up here.
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As I rounded a barricaded gaping hole in the sidewalk, I suddenly came
across a small group of men huddled in the shadows of a crane. They were up
to something less than legal, because they scattered as soon as they saw me,
like bugs when the light is switched on. All except one short dark Hispanic
