I looked at her, turned, made it to the door before turning back.
She started unlacing her corset. “Come here.” It fell away from her body.
“Darlin’, I got no idea what this is we got going on here,” I told her. “Naming it don’t change it or make it any stronger. Fact is, it won’t last, but for now let’s enjoy each other.”
“Someone set the hook deep in you and yanked hard.”
“Cass. She took me for a ride, confirmed for me that love is a whore’s promise. Taught me not to trust my gut with girls.”
“Girls? How old was she?”
“Twenty-two. But it wasn’t like that.”
“It is always like that. Baby, I’m fifty-four. I got some years on you.”
“You look younger and finer than I deserve.”
“Black don’t crack. But I have the mileage, trust me. So before we go deeper into whatever this is or isn’t, you need to know some shit.”
“You fucked some men, I fucked some girls, can we leave it at that?”
“Bigger than that. Come here.” I lay with my head on her breasts, listening to her heartbeat and her lungs fill up with air. I also listened to her words. “I was sixteen when I killed for the first time.”
“I was sixteen when I joined the Marines, doesn’t mean—”
“You will shut the fuck up or sleep alone.”
I started to say something, thought better and kept my mouth shut. She smiled for an instant, then it faded.
“It was payback. The night I was conceived, three thugs went after my father. Beat him to death, crippled my mother. Doesn’t make it right, just telling you the facts. When I was sixteen I executed those men one by one. I even convinced a rival to pay me thirty grand for taking them out. Afterward, I didn’t feel guilt. I felt relief, almost happy. With the cash I could stop stripping. Killing one man is hard. Killing two is near impossible. But after three it just started to come naturally.”
She was stoking my hair absentmindedly while she continued. “The LA mob heard of me. I thought they were going to kill me, instead they offered me a job silencing a talkative dealer. I popped him, I think in a carwash. No, a . . . oh hell, Moses, I lost count of how many men I killed. I was doing speed, staying up all night, looking for bigger and rougher hits. San Francisco, the deal was to take out some triad punks who had forgotten to pay to play in a mobbed-up town. Six armed guys. Thirty-six hours since my last sleep. I was half in the bag. I tossed a frag in the window. Then another. Hit the sidewalk. Glass and body parts rained down. I ran in with a M16, blasting. Killed a waiter and a lobster tank. The six I was after weren’t even in the main dining room. Dead and dying civilians moaned. I felt numb. I looked down. A dead kid, and I was numb. Moses, I killed a kid.”
“Finish it. I want to hear it all.”
“I kicked into the back room. I killed five clean, the sixth nailed my back. I took him out as I fell. My driver got me out of SF, took me to a private doctor in Oakland. This was eleven years ago. I hadn’t taken a life again until I did to save you.”
“No guilt on that, they chose the move.”
“Agreed. When I was rehabbing, I slowly started to feel things. It took years, but finally I saw that life was amazing and death was final. I was no longer numb. I cried for a month. Since then, I have learned to take pleasure where I find it. I don’t look back and I don’t count my tomorrows.”
“I killed a woman in Beirut. Another in Mexico.” I told her.
“I put a poodle in a nuker to get a mob guy’s gumar to give up her man.”
“Did you cook the pooch?”
“Didn’t have to.”
“Then you’re clean on that one.”
“Nope, big guy. I would have. Almost did. It stays on the count.”
“I used to let baby girls friction fuck me in the lap dance room.”
“I shot a man in the face while fucking him.”
“I let a girl think she loved me so I could keep her by my side.”
“I slit a man’s throat in a tub surrounded by candles.”
“I beat a priest with a barbwire-wrapped piece of two by four.”
“You win.” She kissed the top of my head. And someplace deep opened.
I lay silent for a long time. Not gathering courage, gathering strength. It was now, or I’d never say what came next. “My mother was a gin-head who loved Jesus and drinking and not much more. When I was six, her pastor was over. She passed out. I never told a soul this.”
“You don’t have to.” She was stroking my hair again.
“He bent me over the dresser. There was blood in my Jockies after he was done. I hated myself for letting him take that from me. Take my power. Take control of my body. I hated him for making me helpless and weak. Luke, my older brother, once told me only way a man gets his power back is to win it, said it was a Viking thing. The pastor came back the next week. After mom passed out he took me into the bedroom for our secret time. He wasn’t ready for what hit him. That barbed wire tore him the fuck up. No one heard his screams as I went after his legs. Blood was filling his shoes when he stumbled out. Never saw him again. I didn’t feel numb, I felt like my Viking ancestors—victorious.”
WE LAY THERE silent for a long time. When we made love, it was more a healing ritual than sex. I fell asleep still inside her. Even with all the bullshit raining on me, I slept peacefully.
CHAPTER 30
I was eating breakfast with the ever-expanding crew. Peter and Kenny were having a heated discussion about the death of print news.
“Ink is the only truly vetted news source.”
“The papers are owned by same motherfuckers they should be investigating. Name one major paper owned by a person of color.”
Blah, blah, blah.
Sunshine held my hand. When she thought I wasn’t looking, she would look me over and smile.
THEIR SHOWER WAS industrial. One line of showerheads, reminded me of prison. I was searing my flesh, hot as I could stand it. Mikayla appeared out of the steam. The heat couldn’t touch her. She was dressed all in black, shoulder holsters crisscrossing her torso.
Saw you last night. She was disappointed.
“Saw what?”
Saw you let the pig live.
“Twenty-six? I don’t kill innocents.”
He’s not an innocent. Victim. She held up her fingers, counting. Abuser. Collaborator. Hero. That is it. No others. He was police, protecting a pimp. He was a Collaborator.
“Must feel good, being so certain. I don’t kill innocents.”
Even that woman in the Root? You think saving this young woman will clear that debt?
“No. That’s life’s job.”
Get away from this woman Sunshine. She is turning you human. It will get you killed.
“Quitting is impossible. So is leaving her.”
The psycho ghost with a battle-axe to grind dissolved into wisps of vapor. I’m sure she was still hiding in the shadows, with all my other ghosts.
When Kenny stepped out of the steam buck naked, I almost punched a hole in his head. He ducked and saved us both the embarrassment of explaining our naked tussle to Sunshine.
“Whoa, ease up, man.”
I answered him with a stare that finally made him cast down his eyes.
“Never step up on a man in the shower, unless you intend to stab him.”
“Um, ok. Who were you taking to when I came in?”
“No one.”
“Sounded like—”
“Nothing. Like nothing.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Now I remember it sounded like nothing.”
I flipped the handle to as cold as I could stand. Held myself in place until I was dotted with gooseflesh. Having finished the ice water treatment, I started toweling off. Kenny stepped in beside me.
“Stand that close in Pelican Bay, you’ll get a shank or a cock in your ass.”
“Cool. I’ll remember that if I’m ever stupid enough to get arrested.” He st
ared hard as he could. I had to laugh.
“You’re all right, kid.” I pulled on my Levi’s, started lacing up my Docs.
Kenny got dressed, watching me, puzzling out a problem. “I have never seen her like this, not even near.”
“How?”
“She’s . . . fuck, it’s like she’s almost happy.”
“Seemed happy when we met.”
“Counterfeit. She is flawless at making people believe she’s happy when she smells money. A waft of green and she rolls out the party girl.”
Standing, I caught a look at myself in the mirror. I looked like shit. Forty extra pounds of beer and carnitas, scars intertwined with tattoos. Caught Kenny looking at the scars across my back. “You ever kill a man, Kenny?”
“No, sir.”
“Don’t if you can help it. Barring that, don’t let them shoot you. It hurts.”
I WAS ON my second cup of coffee and first painkiller when Ice-T’s “Cop Killer” came blasting out of my pocket. Kenny and Peter were laughing at my confused face. When I finally got the phone out, the readout said Lowrie.
“Moses.”
“Detective.”
“You are fucked six ways to Sunday. They want you for kidnapping an officer. The APB said you are armed and extremely dangerous.”
“They say anything about the six bangers I smoked in East LA last night? No, right?”
“Chief Dobbs has you on his shoot-on-sight list. He’s spreading rumors you shot a cop in Reno.”
“Just to watch him die?”
“This isn’t funny, McGuire.”
“No, it’s not. Is this the part where you ask me to turn myself in, tell me you can protect me?”
“Son, that would be a bald-ass lie. If I was your father, I’d tell you to find a deep hole and start digging for China.”
“But you’re not my father.”
“No, I’m an angry cop. Find the freaks who butchered Rollens and take them off the count. We clear on that?”
“You’re saying I should kill them.”
“Yes, son, that’s exactly what I am saying. There are MS-13 soldiers being protected by LAPD. I don’t know if the bangers did Rollens, but LAPD doctored her file. She’s just another drunk driver now.”
“How many bad cops you have?”
“Wrong question, son. How many good? That may be easier to count. Ninety percent of people are sheep, that’s convicts, cops, whatever. It’s the ten percent that lead you have to look out for. This deal here we have going, it makes Rampart look like a blip.”
“Is he dirty, your Chief?”
“As sin, and he isn’t my Chief. Dobbs tells us it’s just politics. Said we had to make peace with MS-13, let them control the other gangs. We are outnumbered and outgunned, yes, but this crap makes us no better than the criminals we are paid to arrest.”
“Make me a deal, Lowrie. If I disappear, make them bleed.”
“Will do. Want to hear something corny?”
“No.”
“Who cares what you want. I grew up in Hollywood, and all I ever wanted to be was a cop. I love this city, Moses, let’s not let them have it.”
“We’ll burn her to the ground before we’ll let them have her.” I hung up, ate two more Vics. Sunshine took my hand in hers and held it. I could feel my pulse slow.
I passed what Lowrie said to me on to Peter and Kenny. Peter wanted Lowrie to go on the record. I knew he wouldn’t. He was dying and had a pension to protect, for his wife.
“I came across this tidbit.” Peter was digging through a pile of old school yellow legal pads. “Señor Sanchez? He has a son.”
“I know, I told you I met him.”
“Not him, another. District Attorney named Henry Rodriguez. Real law and order prick. Helped draft the Clean Streets Act, did homeless sweeps, criminalized poverty. Goes under his mom’s name. He was born here, but the kicker is—drum roll—he’s illegitimate. Still, Sanchez’s kid.”
“How the hell did you find that out?”
“Birth certificate. After Obama, every politician with any melanin posted theirs online. Along with banking records and donors lists. Did I say he was running for mayor?”
“No, left that out.”
“Ok, Mo, listen.” Peter was on a manic tear, but his research was solid as ever. “He needs at least four mil in a war chest to be competitive. Where does an East LA barrio-bred man get that much cash? Right? Daddy? Maybe. He said it was all small donors. Who has the kind of boots-on-the-ground organization to pull that off? Unions? Sure. But they’re backing the incumbent. So? Moses?”
“Hell if I know, Peter.”
“Me neither, but follow the money, right? Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Follow the money.”
“Let me know when you find out.” Peter spun back to the workstation and was gone, lost on the information superhighway.
WHEN KENNY RETURNED the Tempest, even I wouldn’t have recognized it. She was a pale, sun-faded blue and gray primer. The windows were dark enough to hide any occupants. The dents in the front end were gone. Kenny popped the hood, showing off the tubular steel used to reinforce the front end. “Run this bitch into a brick wall and keep going.”
“Nice work.”
“Did it for Sunshine.”
“I know.”
“He’s afraid if you get killed in a wreck,” Sunshine rolled up to us, “he’ll have to listen to my blubbering.”
“You’d cry if I died?”
“Like a baby, baby. So you keep coming back and we never have to see that ugly picture.”
I had to get out of there, and fast. Every moment I looked into her green eyes I fell deeper. One damn sure way to get dead was to have your head at home while your body was on the battlefield. When the Vikings first hit England they terrorized the Brits. It was a battle of two theologies. Christians said be kind and good, obedient and meek, and you will go to the land of milk and honey. The wild Norse believed that it all came down to how well you died. If you died in battle, the beautiful, fierce, winged Valkyries would swoop down and take you to Valhalla, where you would drink ale, feast, fight and fuck. Vikings had a hold over England, what is now Russia, and most of what we now identify as the Western world because they didn’t give a fuck about suffering, weren’t afraid of dying, and only wanted victory and honor.
“SUNSHINE, WE NEED to talk.”
“Ok, baby. Why so stern?”
“In private.”
“Bedroom is private.” She grinned.
“Your office.” My stomach soured. Bile entered my mouth. I choked it back down. I closed the door and sat in a club chair.
“This the motherfucking time you tell me it’s over? Now?”
“Cut me some slack here. We had fun, but love? Not on my plate.”
“I didn’t say—”
“I was high on Vics, adrenaline and fear. Said some shit. It got real, but that was the drugs talking. Wanna know why I fuck strippers? No psychology, I do it because they look good and it feels good.”
“Fuck you, Moses. Fuck. You.”
I walked past her and out of the office. She followed.
“This that corny scene where you push me away so I won’t get hurt when you die? That this? Well, fuck you. I am not in love, you arrogant bastard.” She rolled to the gym.
It wasn’t long before I heard weights slamming up and down. Kenny walked over, looked at the closed gym door then at me. “Why today? We are all stressed, exhausted, but now . . .”
“Kenny, what I need is to find out where these girls are. Only plan I have now, keep blowing their shit up until their boss meets me, then I tell them give me the girl and I’ll be a ghost.”
“Dumbass plan.”
“Then find out what has happened to the streetwalkers in this town. If they are buried in the desert, tell me under what rock. Find them.”
CHAPTER 31
I burned rubber down the street. Gregor said nothing until we hit the 405.
“That was a weak move
, Boss.”
“Thanks, Doctor Phil. I really need to hear your take on my bullshit life.” I crunched a Vic.
Gregor watched me grimly for a few more miles. “I think you are afraid you will fall in love and she will leave you.”
“I like your stoic mute act better.”
He looked at me, pissed, not hurt.
Fuck them all. I pulled off in Santa Monica, found a liquor store and bought some smokes and a pint of Johnnie Walker Black. Leaning on the trunk of the Tempest, I fumbled with my iPod. The Pogues kicked into Run Sodomy & the Lash, the Celtic punk making me smile even on a day like this.
Looking up, I saw I was parked under a billboard. Staring down at me was a handsome, clean-cut Latino. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and he was shaking a cop’s hand. It was a coded message; I am the law and order candidate. He was a Democrat, and needed the base as well. Ad copy was placed artistically around him. It was slick. It read:
When was the last time you saw a hooker on the street?
When was the last time you saw a drunk urinate in public above Main Street?
Have you noticed the closing of dozens of medical marijuana pharmacies?
District Attorney Henry Rodriguez has personally made our downtown a safe place to eat and shop.
In the corner was a small piece of text:
Brought to you by fans of a clean city.
“WE SMOKING, BOSS?” Leaned next to me.
“Looks that way.” Gregor had given up smoking and now only did it when I did. I passed him the pack and he shook one out.
“Menthol? I hate menthol.”
“Me too. Figure if I live, I’ll be happy to quit.”
Now he was staring at the sign. “Did you see Soylent Green, Boss?”
“No.”
“Too bad.”
FIRST WE HIT Capone’s. The club was near empty. Three unattractive girls were working the stage, jiggling all over the place for the one customer. We never sat. I dropped a twenty at each girl’s feet.
GOT OFF THE 5 at Fletcher. I was back at The Pink Pearl—what a dumb fucking name for a strip club. Years back, when it was Club Xstasy, I met Gregor there, broke his nose. Then, the joint was run by a man I thought of as a father figure. At least until he sold me out. I swore if I saw him again I would kill him. Truth was, I would.
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