Feeling like he was staring, Lucky tuned back in. The subject at hand was reliving their rock bottoms—those seminal moments when addicts realize that it’s either accept their own deaths or seek help.
Do I even have a rock bottom?
This was Lucky’s true struggle. He’d hit some lows in his life—awful and debilitating turns. But a bona fide floor in his subterranean self? His commitment to treatment and sobriety had begun with little more than a conversation. Gonzo had expressed her unconditional affection for him. Yet she wouldn’t commit to rekindling their relationship or be teenaged Karrie’s surrogate mother without Lucky’s agreeing to a sobriety program. She’d also suggested that should Lucky decline her request, she might anonymously inform the LA Sheriff’s Department of his untreated condition. Lucky weighed the choices—kick the pain meds or suffer the obvious consequences—and picked the former with little more than a shrug. Not what most in recovery would call an undeniable rock bottom.
Conclusion?
I haven’t yet touched my bottom. It’s down there. If I survive another day as a cop, I might get that much closer.
Lucky’s turn to share of himself came around. He summoned what truth he hoped would sound tragic enough—the fiery death of his little brother—the faces of crime victims he couldn’t save—the general plethora of cops ’n’ robbers crap that reeked of verisimilitude. All the while, as he spoke, he was desperate to be the kind of man who could connect with his own words. But that would require Lucky believe in words with the same conviction he had in verified human behavior.
In Luckyland, actions spoke.
The hour-long AA meeting wrapped up at 2:00 P.M. straight up, with more than half the attendees making beelines for their next destinations while the remainder lingered at a buffet table stained from coffee and the crumbs of leaky jelly-filled donuts. Lucky’s intent was to grab a free cup of tar-to-go and a mouthful of something doughy and glazed if there was anything left in the flimsy pink box.
“Hey, man. Your share really hit me.”
The voice came from Lucky’s right. Somehow Lucky instantly knew who it was—as if he’d been able to picture the vocal tone of the smart-shirted guy with the obvious forehead. That pronounced space above his eyebrows—the obvious permanent hitch in his gait.
Something.
“Steve Wimminger,” the man introduced himself with a strong, confident hand.
The name didn’t make an impression on the sheriff’s deputy, who accepted the handshake.
“Lucky. And thanks, I guess. Sorry. It was Steve?”
“Friends just call me Wim—or Wimmer,” he admitted with a nervy bounce. “Anyway, kinda new to the AA thing, if you couldn’t tell.”
“How many days you got?” asked Lucky.
“Three weeks sober,” said Wimmer. “Hard shit.”
“Musta thought you were somebody else cuz I coulda swore I’d seen you in the rooms before.”
“Might have,” agreed Wimmer. “Not my first pony ride. You know. Stops ’n’ starts. I’d hit a meeting. Like I thought it was some kinda magic, you know? Two hours later I’m in the office men’s room with a straw up my nose.”
“Sounds glamorous.”
“Lawyer. Long hours. Late nights.”
“Well, three weeks is better than no weeks,” assured Lucky, preparing to wrap up the brief conversation. “One day at a time, man.”
“Hey. Got this uncle in Philly,” Wimmer segued, revealing a slight limp as he half-stepped closer. “Thirty years in the sobriety bank. So he suggests that, for a sponsor, I hit a meeting every day until I find someone who really hits my button. Got me in here.” Wimmer gently performed a three-fingered tap to his chest. “You did that for me today.”
“Thanks,” replied Lucky. “But I’m not sponsor material. Not even a year in.”
“But you got your shit down.”
“Two minutes of me doing the circle-time rap doesn’t give that much away.”
“So don’t sponsor me,” said Wimmer, pulling on his own reins. “But maybe help me find somebody. Because this time I really need to make it stick.”
“Really,” explained Lucky. “I’m not your guy—”
“Who’s your sponsor then?”
“Guy I know a long time. Dwayne Conroy. This isn’t his side of the city. Not his meeting.”
“Think he might know somebody? Like if you asked him for me? Cuz like I said, your share gave me goose bumps. Dunno why but I think somebody like you—but with some more road underneath his wheels—someone who could prick up my ears might be just what I need to stay on the path.”
Lucky’s chitchat meter had run out of quarters. So before Wimmer had let go his last syllable, the cop produced a vellum business card with an embossed Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department logo.
“Deputy Lucas Dey,” read Wimmer. “Figured you were a cop from, well, the share.”
“Just keep it anonymous,” said Lucky.
“Yeah, yeah. That’s your number?”
“My cell. Call me in a coupla days. I probably won’t pick up but leave a message. Maybe I’ll have caught up with Dwayne. Fair ’nuff?”
“Thanks. Really.”
“Hit more meetings,” advised Lucky, instantly regretting how he was already sounding sponsor-like. “Twice a day if you have to. Whatever it takes.”
“I’m callin’ you,” pointed Wimmer. He was backing away, flapping Lucky’s business card in front of a grin so wide it stretched his face in all directions but up.
Lucky was briefly amused. If he ever ran into Wimmer again, he might remember him as the fellow who could sell his forehead as a human billboard, renting the space over his eyebrows to the top-bidding advertiser.
The basement door was atop a short flight of linoleum-tiled steps. On another day Lucky might have climbed them two at a time, arriving at the top landing in half the strides. But the tightness he felt at the base of his spine advised him otherwise.
Meanwhile, Wimmer remained until Lucky had cleared the basement stairs. He dropped that winning grin, spun left and sought a quiet corner with his mobile phone. He dialed, checked once to make sure he’d put enough space between himself and the remaining addicts gathered around the coffee urns, and waited five rings for an answer.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” said Wimmer right off the top with relish. “Woulda placed fifty-fifty odds the asshole would’ve made me. But nothin’. Sure of it. Not a spit of recognition. I even talked him up about a sponsor… Seriously… Yeah, yeah. Take it from me, Lucky fucking Dey doesn’t have a clue the size of the bat I’m gonna take to his little world.”
11
Downtown Los Angeles. 2:32 P.M.
Tim bitched at himself. It was sticky hot and he could feel the moisture from his butt crack sucking at the fabric of his fat-man khakis. He seemed to be suffering a walking wedgie at the end of every city block. More concerned about how it might look than the discomfort, he’d pulled out his shirttail hoping to conceal the embarrassment.
A city bus trucked past. He cursed himself for knowing nary a lick about the metro transit system. Yet why the hell should he? In his universe, subways and busses were for immigrants. Conversely, Tim Gilligan was a lily-white Anglo and a Southern Cal native. Those of his extraction either drove cars, biked or hoofed it. And that was tragically that.
At least he’d made something out of his ninety-minute lunch with Catalina Rincon, hydrating himself with every glass of water the buxom, Turkish-blooded twenty-something server poured. He kept stealing looks at the cleavage peeking out from her black yoga top and she kept pouring as long as his eyeballs promised a tip befitting her service. Despite her available looks, the waitress couldn’t hold a candle to Tim’s lunch date. Catalina Rincon. The petite thirty-five-year-old must have been turning heads since she was twelve. Though she was fully Hispanic by birth—equal parts Salvadoran and Colombian—Cat shaded closer to African American, complete with a shock of tantalizingly frizzy brown hair, freckled c
heeks, striking jaw, and lips that could only have been formed by a design committee of heterosexual men. Then there were her eyes, hazel and so penetrating that men in her life complained she could read their most sacred thoughts.
The rest of Cat was chiseled from a workout regime that began weekday mornings at 5:30 A.M. Or so she’d proudly brag as she and Tim split their usual order of a rib-eye steak with mashed potatoes, falafel, hummus, and a tart green salad. Tim was self-conscious with every delectable bite that his girth was filling the entirety of his mesh-wire chair while Cat could have shared her identical seat with a pair of pet Corgis.
Tim pressed Cat about her fellow board member Hal Solomon, shockingly gunned down in his Tarzana driveway. Cat was quick to push past what she termed the “sad shit” and maneuver the conversation to updates on Tim’s two families, the Damocles’ Sword that was his pending divorce number two, and what it was like for a man in his forties to be single again. Was he seeing anybody? Trolling for honeys on social media or dating sites? Or was he fisting his way through Asian porn sites again? Cat was all about sex talk as it related to Tim, but not at all herself. It was a constant tease and tactic as she was going out of her head-turning way not to discuss Hal Solomon.
“What do you know about the murder?” Tim pressed again, “Beyond what’s on the news?”
“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours,” defended Cat. “What more could anybody know?”
“How about that Hal wasn’t on board?” Tim was leaning in so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice over the rumble of a nearby diesel engine on idle.
“Don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” answered Cat.
“Shit if you don’t,” Tim countered. “You act like I’m wearing a wire.”
“Are you?”
“Like that’s where we’re at? After all this time?”
“Hal was on the fence but coming around,” insisted Cat. “More important, if he didn’t want in, then he was happy just to get out of the way.”
“Well, he’s out of the way now, yeah?”
“It was a car jacking. That’s all.”
“In Tarzana? Brother from the hood just hanging out, waiting to steal the old man’s Tesla?”
“We don’t know who he was or if he was from Bakersfield for all any of us know. Let alone the hood? You’re reaching, Timbo.”
“Think I’ve earned the right to some paranoid thoughts,” defended Tim. “And so should you.”
“I don’t operate that way.” Cat tried a come-on smile. Confident. Calculated. Like she knew some kind of secret password to a safe room.
“Just trying to stay a step or two ahead,” Tim tried to explain. “No surprises.”
“Three-hundred-million dollars, Timbo,” said Cat. “That’s what the DWP injects into the city coffers per year. You don’t think I’ve got my bases covered?”
“Your bases. As in Cat Rincon’s sweet ass.”
“Don’t forget we both have stock in this,” she said. “Five million by years end… And thanks. Not sure you ever noticed my ass. God knows I work hard enough to keep it worth looking at.”
Tim hardly looked sated by her answer.
“You want dessert?” asked Cat.
“I wanna sleep tonight without wondering if I’m next.”
“Why would you be next? Big Tim brings the juice. This doesn’t happen without you.”
The juice!
In all Tim’s fear and paranoia over Hal Solomon’s murder, he’d forgotten to crosscheck his private schematics against the master DWP map detailing the Compton blowout. If there was no conflict, he sure as shit didn’t need to tell Cat.
“Did you hear me?” queried Cat. “We’re partners. You ’n’ me. Thick and thin all the way to the pay-off.”
“Yeah, yeah,” groaned Tim. “But does Cat’s Compton partner know that? Huh? Does he even know who I am?”
“He knows what he needs to know,” calmed Cat. “Just like you only know what you know. And as long as you both trust me…”
The end of lunch came with a cash split of the check. Cat kissed Tim on his scruffy cheek and he was soon hoofing it back to his office in hopes the walk and perspiration would melt off the calories from having nervously polished off the last of the garlic mashed potatoes.
“Fuck her,” groaned Tim to nobody but the corner panhandlers.
Fuck her? Unlikely.
He couldn’t imagine someone with Cat’s appeal getting cozy with a man whose ass-crease could sweat like a lumberjack’s armpit.
Yet besides me, who hasn’t fucked her?
The label climber wasn’t fit to describe a woman as ambitious and willing as Cat Rincon. Her rise from city council volunteer to Mayor’s Chief of Staff to running her own real estate management firm to Department of Water and Power Board of Directors was nothing less than meteoric. Which made Tim wonder: what else could Cat Rincon do or with whom was she willing to make a bargain to achieve her next bloody goal?
Bloody goal?
Tim caught himself, stopping mid-trudge. Had his brain pulled a Freudian slip on him? Or was the heat playing tricks between his subconscious and his affection for Cat?
Cat Rincon. So ambitious she’d kill?
Tim stuffed the thought, wiped his brow, and resumed his walk.
12
Compton. 3:02 P.M.
Trees. They were the last image Frosty hoped to recall before falling asleep and the first when he woke. Even if the time was as late as three in the afternoon. Frosty’s eyes fluttered open and focused on a mature podocarpus or afrocarpus, also known as a fern pine. The one pictured on the magazine cut-out scotch-taped to his wall was forty feet tall, alone and throwing shade over a small, Cape Cod styled home.
“Laaaaaammmaaaaaarrrrrrrr!” his mother’s voice called out from the kitchen. “How late you gonna lay up?”
Frosty allowed his eyes to slide to the next magazine photo. Schinus terebinthifolius. Or better known as a Brazilian pepper. He liked to quiz himself on the Latin. Knowing the scientific genus of every species wouldn’t be required once he finally acquired his dream nursery. But being able to rattle off the Latin in rapping licks would be sure to sound badass. Educated. Hardly like the ghetto trash he felt deep in his bones.
“Lamaaaaaaaaarrrr!”
Frosty hated his birth name. Nobody but his mother and Gran’nana were allowed to call him that.
Lamar Otis Clayton, III.
His grandfather, the original Lamar was a man of respect. He was both preacher and proud Compton tobacconist. His corner shop was a famous gathering post where Lamar, the senior, would sell good smokes and God’s mercy to whomever walked through his door. Frosty’s own dad, otherwise known as Deuce amongst his Crip brethren, was long since dead, killed in a drive-by only two blocks from the converted garage where Lamar number three laid his head to rest.
Frosty sat on his single cot. Stark naked. Seeing his skinny legs beneath him ushered in a flood of memories from the night before. After ditching the stolen Tesla behind the razor-wire fences of a Lynwood chop shop, he’d bummed a ride back to the eight-hundred-square-foot duplex he shared with his mother and his Gran’nana. In the dark of his backyard, he’d stripped out of his bloody clothes and stuffed them into a large trash bag along with the .22 pistol. He had hidden the evidence in the empty wheel well of his black-on-black Cadillac Escalade’s trunk with a plan to discard all fouling evidence the next afternoon. Frosty had quietly showered, smoked a leftover joint while sitting on his toilet with the window open, and eventually passed out amongst his beloved trees.
“Laamaaaaaaaarrrrr!” This time his mother double-thumped a heavy fist against the wall.
“I hear ya!” bit back Frosty.
“Need a man’s help in here!”
“Gettin’ dressed first,” said Frosty. “What time is it?”
“Time to get your skinny ass up!”
Frosty reached for his phone. The time blinked next to a variety of unanswered texts and a voi
cemail from a burner phone number he recognized as Julius Colón’s. He pressed the phone to his ear. The recorded voice came across tinny:
“My ice cold nigga. Got us some catchin’ up ’n’ shit, know what I’m sayin’? Come by later ’n’ we sit down. An’ don’ you leave nothin’ out. Need me the whole play by play.”
Frosty dressed, choosing a pair of Nikes in a color scheme called Deceptive Red. It was an obvious Blood color and, as a rule, verboten for any self-respecting Crip. If anyone was to pipe up about the shade of his footwear, his answer would be vintage Frosty.
Who? Me? I ain’t all that. These is just shoes and don’t they look the shit?
With meticulous relish, Frosty sat at the kitchen nook and replaced the stock white laces with a fresh set of blue satins. The afternoon light filtered in through a street-facing dining room with the occasional shadow being cast by his perpetually busy mother, Des’ree.
“Red shoes,” she said, returning from his room with a basket of laundry.
“Goin’ nowhere I ain’t known,” replied Frosty, “An’ things don’t go like that no more. Check it. My laces are blue, anyways. See?”
“Lord don’t recognize no blues ’n’ reds.” Des’ree had disappeared into the kitchen cubby with the recently installed stackable washer and dryer—brand new Whirlpool courtesy of her one and only baby boy.
“Where’s Gran’nana?” switched Frosty.
“Where she’s always at,” said Des’ree. “It’s a weekday and she old and somebody she knows gettin’ planted in the ground… Pickin’ her up after and we goin’ to Bible study. Wanna come?”
Frosty gave his mother a smirk. In return he received a wink and a row of crooked yet brilliant white teeth. Frosty once offered to pay for braces. But his momma wouldn’t have it, replying that God made her perfect just like He’d made her young Lamar perfect. Her smile was infectious and framed by an incredible roundness which reached from her ankles to ears. When she unleashed that beaming grin on her boy, he felt the only true warmth he’d ever known. The rest of the world had left him pretty cold. And he had treated it in kind.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 68
