The trainee had to empty the glove box to find the registration slip. Whether it was out of a penchant for neatness, hating to leave things undone, or her mother’s voice chirping in her subconscious, Shia chose to restock the glove box with what she’d unleashed. Searching for the missing bottles of Mexican Coke, she reached under the front passenger seat and allowed her fingertips to explore. But instead of touching a cool, glass cylinder of pure cane-sweetened cola, her middle finger brushed something steely and all too familiar. Shia crouched deeper, twisted and lowered her head until her screwed-down cornrows pushed against the floor mat. Though underneath the seat was almost opaque with blackness, the faint illumination coming from headlights’ reflection and the micro lamp in the driver’s door left something in clear relief.
A gun muzzle.
Dipping into her belt with her left hand, Shia found her tactical flashlight, buttoned the end with her thumb, and set the passenger seat undercarriage ablaze with one hundred and twenty white halogen lumens.
“Sir!” shouted Shia.
“Sheeeeeeeiiiiiiit,” griped Howdy Doody.
“What she find?” asked Lucky, as if he hadn’t already suspected.
“I got guns, sir!” answered Shia without being asked.
“What flavor?” asked Lucky, withdrawing three steps and unsheathing his .40 cal in case any of his detainees chose to up and rabbit on him. He keyed his shoulder-affixed mic and quietly requested backup units.
Under the blast of that small fistful of tactical light, Shia counted two weapons of the semi-auto variety, neatly attached to the underside of the seats with Velcro. A quick scoot inward and a swing of the beam under the driver’s seat revealed two more automatics and a machine pistol with at least a thirty-round clip, also secured with black Velcro.
“I count five,” said Shia, almost breathless. “All semi-autos!”
“A gun party,” cracked Lucky.
“Hey, fuck you!” angered the afro-man with the SpongeBob comb. “We don’t know shit about shit.”
“Shut your holes,” ordered Howdy Doody, before demanding, “Only word we gotta say is ‘lawyer.’”
Howdy Doody checked his crew. Nods rippled up and down the line of Bloods like a stadium wave. Each appeared resigned. Pleased enough with himself, Howdy Doody lifted his chin to discover Lucky unsnapping the lock on a leather-bound citation book.
“What’s that now?” asked Howdy Doody. “Gonna write me up for this shit?”
“Straight up? You’re goin’ to jail for the guns,” said Lucky. “But I’m still writing the ticket for improperly discarding that smoke.”
“All this AND you’re writin’ me a fuckin’ ticket—”
“RUNNER!” shouted Shia.
Freckles was up and digging his feet into the sidewalk, arms pumping at full throttle. Lucky showed a hand signal for Shia to hold in place while directing the remaining six bangers with his gun muzzle.
“On your stomachs!” ordered Lucky, “Fingers laced behind your heads!”
“Sir?!” asked Shia.
“Hold ’em and wait for backup!” barked Lucky, all the while his hamstrings were cursing at him for considering a foot chase.
Shia unsheathed her Beretta, arms extended and stepping a few feet to the rear to keep the remaining gang bangers in her weapon’s sights.
“HE SAID STOMACH—FINGERS LACED!” demanded Shia.
As the Blood crew slowly twisted and rolled over to their stomachs, Shia expected to see Lucky charging after Freckles, who’d already turned up a driveway and disappeared into a backyard.
But the Lincoln’s engine turned over in a gutty roar. Lucky had dropped behind the wheel and thrown the vehicle into drive with his foot pushing on the gas pedal. The wheels spun and smoked for eight feet before the g-forces took over, closing both open doors as the Town Car accelerated away and carved a right turn at the nearest corner.
Shia—half gob smacked—was retraining her weapon when she noticed Atom Blum had emerged from the black-and-white for a better look.
“GET BACK IN THE UNIT!” ordered the trainee before keying her radio mic. Her voice shook, “Seven-eighty, where’s our backup?”
In Lucky’s hands, the low-riding Lincoln felt like a slow-galloping beast that cornered like a bowling ball. The lowered shocks felt like they were holding on for dear life while Lucky executed a second right-hand turn, powering up the block. After quickly picturing the route he imagined he would have foot-raced after the Blood, Lucky guided the Lincoln on a course to intercept the punk.
The visual reward came quickly. Freckles, shining from his sprint through two backyards, showed up in the Lincoln’s headlights coming out from behind a heavy-trunked tree. At first Freckles seemed bent on keeping pace, crossing the street with plans to hop even more properties. Yet when he saw the Lincoln’s headlamps the Blood stopped in the middle of the street and waved as if flagging down an old friend.
Perhaps Freckles thought his pal Howdy Doody had also up and run, making haste in his classic Lincoln.
Los Angeles Sheriff’s policy would have been for Lucky to brake the vehicle, hop out and attempt to apprehend his escaping suspect. Then again, he reasoned, borrowing the big bad Lincoln to chase down a suspect wasn’t precisely procedure.
You wanna run on Sheriffs? began the rhetorical question formed under Lucky’s skullcap. I’ll teach you to run.
Lucky eased on the gas as if he was swooping in for a fast pickup. Still, he aimed the Lincoln’s right headlamp on a twenty-miles-per-hour heading for Freckles’ left femur. After that, it was the larger object’s momentum versus a semi-stationary Freckles that completed the chase. The elusive Blood was summarily clipped and cartwheeled head over tail to the pavement.
Standing outside the Lincoln, Lucky swept the landscape for passersby or Blood friendlies…
...or witnesses…
Satisfied there’d be no more than neighborhood looky-loos peering out from behind window screens and ghetto bars, Lucky rotated to the passenger side of the Lincoln to assess damage to the suspect.
“You hit me!” squealed Freckles, rocking on the ground, hands gripping his thigh.
Lucky keyed his radio’s mic.
“Seven-eighty. Suspect injured. Requesting EMT.” Settling down to his haunches, Lucky addressed Freckles with a sympathetic rejoinder. “Another night? Woulda seriously foot-chased your ass. But too bad for me I been on your side of a wreck one too many times. You’ll mend. But do yourself a favor and don’t skip the phys therapy.”
16
Mush Man cherished the clatter. When his dogs and shopping sled found maximum speed, the sonic ruckus created could be heard from blocks away. Especially at night. The Food-4-Less grocery cart, held together with scavenged wire, plastic zip-ties, and brick-hammered framing nails salvaged from local construction sites, was half-packed with crushed cans and bottles. It added to a cacophony that Mush Man calculated was as satisfying to the ear as hand-laminated skids against Arctic ice.
“Slow left, slow left,” ordered Mush Man, dropping his left foot and braking with the duct-taped toe of his K-Swiss sneaker.
The mutts and the cart used the entire street to execute the turn up Poinsettia. In his mind’s eye, Mush Man expected the familiar view of a street he was partial to sledding. The asphalt crown at the center of the lane created a ridge that was a challenge to straddle. If he could keep the dogs on an imaginary center stripe, there would be an increased sense of gliding. Mush Man’s trick to stay on course without streetlights was by dead reckoning on the lone porch light where the street T’d to a stop two short blocks ahead.
There was an inky density blanketing the neighborhood. Every single bulb inside every residence was extinguished. It was a veritable blackout that carried as far as Mush Man’s weakening eyes could focus. A single solar-powered hazard marker lay ahead blinking a yellow warning every other second.
“Whoa whoa whoa,” cried Mush Man, dragging his right foot from toe to heel. He pulled
back on the center leash, signaling lead mutt Oprah to ease to a slow trot and stop. The dogs panted and shook their hides. Hank whined. Mush Man kept waiting for his eyes to adjust. The dogs, he knew, could see ahead. They had the canine eye shine—an ability to discern light at five times the distance than that of a human.
“What I give to be one of y’all,” remarked Mush Man.
A breath of wind jiggled the yellow emergency tape roping the DWP site. The slight glint read against Mush Man’s straining retinas, telling the sledder he had arrived at the source of the now dry river. He’d heard on the street that a hole had opened up in the earth and nearly swallowed a police unit.
Lucky’s? he wondered.
“That’s gotta be some story,” he said to his pups. “Shit-piss-shit-shit.”
Mush Man was abiding a simple credo: following destruction is construction. The Department of Water and Power would surely be on the case to fix that dangerous hole in the middle of Poinsettia. That guaranteed a daily influx of union work crews, regarded as refuse machines by urban salvagers. Refundable cans and bottles were likely to be surrendered wherever the clock-watching hardhats sipped their last traces of sodas and energy drinks.
“We needs us a—sucky suck—a light,” said Mush Man. Easing forward he was able to make out three short concrete blockades to keep cars from venturing too close. The solar-powered hazard blinker was riveted to a metal strap on the center barrier, a standard K-Rail. Mush Man was able to twist the light free of its rusty mooring, fully planning to return it to its rightful place once he’d scoured the site for recyclables.
“You guys watch the sled, ’kay?” he instructed the team. He blocked a front wheel of the cart with a loose chunk of asphalt, unfurled a garbage bag and ventured deeper into the site. “I be back—cock-suck-kerrrrrs.”
The pups needed water. So Mush Man made a mental note to salvage what he could with some haste. He carried no watch or phone. His concept of passing minutes was a matter of clicks in his head. He’d imagine his brain had a voice-timer, singing, “one Stevie Wonder, two Stevie Wonder, three Stevie Wonder,” upon his silent command.
The quandary was whether to start inside the hole and work his way out? Or outside in? Realizing there could likely be water at the bottom, Mush Man quickly doubled back to the cart and unhooked the old VW hubcap he used as the dogs’ drinking bowl.
“Back with sometin’ to drink, mutty-mutts.”
The solar-powered hazard light, a double-sided medallion the size of a butter plate, pulsed with enough yellowish pop to show Mush Man an easy ingress to the crater. A single fifteen-foot aluminum ladder had been left with express access to the bottom. Mush Man could see water lapping where the ladder’s feet rested.
Mush Man left the hubcap at the edge of the hole before throwing a leg over and descending. He felt the air change from hot to cool. Moisture clung to his cheeks. As if he’d just climbed into a river cave. Mush Man thought of his dogs—how he’d love to engineer a way to get all four mutts down in the hole.
Find out who a swimmer and who not.
He imagined the animals, once they’d had their splashy fun, would climb out, shake the water from their fur, and be left with that wet-duck-dog smell of a happy animal.
At the ladder’s bottom, Mush Man discovered he was ankle deep. He could feel his hundred and forty pounds squishing bubbles out of the soles of his tired sneakers.
“Oh well, Musher,” said Mush Man. “You a wet sponge now.”
He swung the blinking hazard light, hoping to catch a glint of a can or bottle bobbing across the massive puddle. But all he could read were some exposed cables drooping across striations of dirt underneath a crusty, asphalt cap. At the other end, he could make out a three-inch drainage hose connected to a gas-operated pump scaffolded across the top of two half-sunk saw horses.
“Lookie like nothin’ down here,” realized Mush Man, before he answered back to himself, “Unless your schizo-ass wanna go snorklin’ for it—fuck-fuckity-fuck.”
Mush still had to scour the site as well as fill that hubcap. Turning back to the ladder, he was about to slip the hazard light into his pants for the climb up when he flashed on a face staring into the hole.
“What the fuck you doin’ in my man’s hole?” carved out a voice.
Mush Man fumbled for the hazard light, hoping to better reveal the man. He could see little more than a black scowl on a young man near the top of the ladder before he lost his grip and the lamp careened backward into the water.
“Ain’t nobody’s hole,” defended Mush Man to nobody he could see.
A cellphone glowed above and to the left, followed by a tiny but almost blinding blast of white light. Mush Man couldn’t make out who held the device. He tried to shield his eyes.
“This hole belong to my boss man, J,” said Tuba, rattling the top of the ladder. “That means you are trespassin’ on his shit.”
“Fuck yeah,” chimed Lil Rod, revealing himself behind the phone light.
“Don’t mean nobody no—cocksucker—trouble,” relented a nervous Mush Man.
“What you say?” flared Lil Rod.
“I said—fuck you, fuck your mother—said I mean no harm to nobody—shit shit shitter.”
It was rare for Mush Man to hear the result of his own Tourette’s. The affliction was painfully more pronounced when anxiety spilled over into his mental cocktail. Unfortunately, hearing his own uncontainable curses only increased his stress.
“You just tell me to fuck my momma?” angered Lil Rod. “Somebody should smoke your homeless ass.”
“Step off,” warned Tuba.
“Didn’t he say he wanted to fuck yo momma?” argued Lil Rod.
“Don’ wanna fuck nobody’s—cock cocksucker—momma.”
“Nigga? Get the fuck out the hole!” shouted Tuba. “’Fore I pull this ladder and you got no ways out.”
“Piss fuck piss fuck piss fuck!” blasted Mush Man with no verbal control.
“Man, what’s wrong wit you?” realized Tuba.
“Playin’ us,” said Lil Rod. “That shit won’t go. Not from no homeless nigga.”
“Climbin’ up now—YOU CUNTS,” stammered Mush Man. “Sorry sorry. Didn’t mean—YOU’RE ALL CUNTS!”
“Shut your shit ’n’ climb,” forced Tuba.
“Suck my balls,” vomited Mush Man. “My dogs… Lemme just get water for—GUZZLE MY CUM, NAPPYHEAD MOTHERFUCKER!”
“WHAT YOU SAY?” angered Lil Rod.
“My dogs—”
“You said something—”
“SHITSTAIN, SHITSTAIN, FUCK FUCK COCKSUCKER!”
Tuba was feet away from Lil Rod. And despite what he sensed evolving, he could neither summon the words nor cover the few yards in time to prevent the sixteen-year-old pizza slinger from turning the moment into a mistake.
“Don’t wanna fight nobody—Mister Fucknut,” pleaded Mush Man, hands open and arms wide in a universal sign of surrender. “Mush Man just wanna love his puppy dogs—”
Pop. Pop. Pop.
The three shots from Lil Rod’s revolver sounded like successive firecrackers. Lil Rod had lowered his phone just before squeezing off the initial .38 caliber volley. Bullets one and two had whizzed right and higher right, striking only the mud-caked wall. Somehow, with the third squeeze of the trigger, Lil Rod had unconsciously corrected aim and, once the hammer had snapped back to the cartridge, the cheap wad-cutter had drawn a straight line downward and through the target’s inner thigh.
Mush Man squealed, unleashing a cacophony of sympathetic howls from his dogs. They bellowed and pulled at their leads.
Whether or not Tuba was caught up in the moment or just feared further screams into the night, he lifted his own pistol—a 9mm Glock 19—and emptied the entire twenty-two round magazine in the direction of Mush Man’s screeches. Lil Rod limped in with his final three pops, aiming at nothing, only to quench what was left of his bloodlust.
A haze of spent gunpowder hung. Then, in the follo
wing quiet as the dogs’ howls subsided, Lil Rod lifted his phone and shone the flashlight feature into the hole. If there was a body, neither he nor Tuba could put eyeballs on it.
“What we do?” asked Lil Rod.
“Get the fuck out,” answered Tuba.
“An’ Julius?”
“We get the fuck out,” repeated Tuba, “Then we figure out what to tell J.” Tuba withdrew from the edge of the hole and began the first steps of a two-block sprint. Lil Rod stayed on Tuba’s heels, happy to leave behind both the hole and whatever was left of the vagrant inside it.
17
The arrest procedure involving the seven gun-toting Bloods should have been a pro forma process. Drop the three black-and-white loads of Bloods at the Compton Station where they’d be detained until formal charges and arraignments, then return to patrol and write up all reports at the end of shift.
“If we don’t fall into another sink hole,” Shia had quietly joked, succeeding in getting Lucky to reveal only the slightest up-tilt at the corners of his mouth.
The station’s booking officer, Sergeant Mike Yang, had been suffering from IBS—irritable bowel syndrome—which sent the twelve-year vet on beeline trots to the men’s room. Add to the mix a van full of Salvadoran juveniles selling illegal fireworks out of the back of a pickup truck and a joint task force sting of prostitutes and pimps working the by-the-hour flophouses on Long Beach Boulevard, and the back-up at the booking desk was beginning to look like the line at the DMV.
Lucky suggested they make use of their wait time with a lunch break. That would have usually resulted in a vending machine sandwich had Atom Blum not treated the station house with a surprise order of pizza. The delivery driver from Pizza Wing unexpectedly entered through the front door of the Compton station hauling three vinyl hot-boxes holding a dozen extra-large assorted pies, enough for the walk-ins stuck in the lobby to each sample a slice.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 71
