At least that’s what Lucky presumed. He didn’t know to an absolute certainty if Julius was truly the responsible party. Nor whether the skinny young pizza deliverer had been, in actual fact, on the trigger for Mush Man’s murder. The ghettocide. It was conjecture and conjecture alone that had led Lucky to this singular moment. At Compton’s Pizza Wing. Seated. Sipping cold Pepsi and waiting for a sausage and cheese pie. All the while, his sub-primal sense informed him that he was indeed in the right place at the right time for the right primitive reasons.
Lil Rod was only half-joking about his preference for pulling shifts at Julius’s south side nursery over the stifling kitchen at the Pizza Wing. The long day he’d spent assembling tree boxes had left him with a sore back, splinters and blisters, and craving a long line of tall, ice cold forties. When the text from Big Otis had landed on his phone, informing him that he was needed to fill in at Pizza Wing, he’d been chuffed, thinking his brief time toiling in plantation hell had come to a close. He hadn’t given a second thought to the end of the text, instructing him to make sure to bring his bike rack. If the trigger-happy gangbanger had put it together that he’d be peddling bicycle deliveries all night, Lil Rod might have summoned a fake injury.
“What’s with bleach boy?” Lil Rod didn’t care a whit that lily white Lucky was seated a mere ten feet from him.
“He’s sausage and cheese,” barked the pizza cook as he pulled open the seven-hundred-degree oven to see if the pie was ready.
“That you?” mocked Lil Rod to Lucky. “You a sausage and cheese?”
“Asked for a vanilla milkshake and saltines,” shrugged Lucky, “but your man behind the counter said they was all out.”
Lucky’s comeback secured a belly laugh from somewhere deep in the kitchen. From whom he couldn’t see. Lil Rod, though, didn’t find it funny. In fact, the teenager stiffened and dead-eye-stared at Lucky.
“Think unless you Johnny Law, you in the wrong side of the four-oh-five,” challenged Lil Rod.
“Maybe I heard this is top pizza,” said Lucky. Best dough south of Lennox.”
Lil Rod’s murder glare remained fixed on Lucky until IHOP slid a stack of three pizza boxes into the vinyl hot-box.
“West 163rd,” said IHOP.
“You shittin’ me,” moaned Lil Rod.
“Bitch your lips at Julius,” slammed the pizza cook without looking away from his job. “Now git before shit gets cold.”
Lil Rod picked up the hot-box, but wouldn’t leave before one more unwelcome glower at Lucky. He bungeed the hot-box to the bike rack, flipped on a battery-powered headlamp and backed out. The front wheel barely cleared the threshold when Lucky’s pizza landed on the counter with a metallic crack.
“Gonna eat that here, right?” confirmed IHOP. “Red peppers, Sriracha?”
“I’m good,” said Lucky, retrieving his meal and returning to the seat. He unconsciously spun the pizza like a wheel of fortune, letting the slice choose him instead of the other way around. The crust was hot enough to sting his fingertips, a pain he welcomed. Anything to encourage his adrenal glands to produce more hormones. Strangely, Lucky’s olfactory sense was suppressed and he couldn’t smell the ingredients. He ate anyway, working to maintain his patience with every bite. All the while he flogged himself for not separating Lil Rod’s head from his body when he’d had the chance.
With half the pizza consumed, Lucky slid the chair and let it tilt against the plaster-coated wall. Without a plan or thought, his eyes closed shut for a reprieve. In the darkness, he hoped to clarify his purpose—ease his angst over the missed opportunity. Instead, his mind involuntarily slipped into a non-REM dream sleep—aka the nearly awake hallucinatory stage. In the dream he found himself seated in his home dining room. Not the table shared with Gonzo in their Altadena rental, but the blue-collar Mar Vista home of his youth. The walls bore the same faux wood panels. Dark. Faded finish. The cobalt blue shag carpet was worn and stained. Yet neither his deceased mother nor brother was seated for the meal of sausage and cheese pizza.
Gonzo sat opposite Lucky in her blue-black LAPD pilot’s jumpsuit. Flanking him left and right were Karrie and Travis, both as if dressed and ready for a regular school day. The trio’s faces were as cold as metal. A voice from the kitchen was calling out for instructions on how to operate the oven, a mid-century gas dinosaur with too many dials to decipher. After some ear-strain, Lucky recognized the distant words as belonging to Shia. The trainee was struggling to reheat her slice of pizza. While Lucky yelled back that the oven was off by as much as fifty degrees and she needed to adjust, Karrie was dividing the congealed pie and serving slices on paper plates.
In that five minutes of alpha sleep Lucky had no appetite whatsoever. He craved only pills to kill the pain. A fistful of Percocet would have sated him. With a Vicodin milk shake chaser and a day or two of coma-like napping.
“Finished with that or ya waitin’ for it to get colder?”
Lucky’s eyes snapped wide, the dream sleep interrupted. Seated in the other chair was Julius Colón—between them the half eaten sausage and cheese pizza.
“I can have my kitchen reheat it for ya,” offered Julius.
Lucky tried to clear his corneas with a couple of complete blinks. It was very obvious to him that the struggle between the adrenalin and the Benadryl had been won by the over-the-counter juice. How long had he been sleeping? Two minutes? Ten?
“No matter,” said Lucky, answering his own mental question.
“Was it good?” asked Julius. “My pizza?”
“Did the trick,” replied Lucky, summoning his wits. He felt fuzzy from his hair follicles to toenails.
“Got a text message,” Julius leaned in, gesturing toward the nearby entrance. The entire doorframe appeared to be occupied by Big Otis. “Said you wanted to check on the Mush Man’s dogs?”
“Yeah,” said Lucky, straightening the slouch in his spine. “They okay?”
“Doggies are good. Get yourself good Samaritan points for checkin’ on ’em.” Julius turned his wristwatch—a platinum-cased Breitling—to face Lucky. “But at after three in the mornin’. That’s some weird checkin’ on shit hours.”
“I’m Sheriff’s,” said Lucky. “I’m used to an upside-down clock.”
Julius leaned back in his chair, drummed his fingers twice before snapping them at Big Otis.
“Got my phone, O?” asked Julius.
Big Otis lumbered the four steps to his boss. A smart phone was produced. Julius checked the screen, manipulated the image until it suited him, then turned it around for Lucky’s benefit. On the screen was a still-frame from one of the weed farm’s security cameras. The image was zoomed and grainy, but doubtless in identifying the subject: Lucky Dey as he ushered Mush Man’s four mutts out of the abandoned tire factory.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” complained Julius. “You all about them stupid dogs? Or law enforcement got some play I don’t see? And I mean that like this way. I know you Sheriff’s. But you just a patrol motherfucker. That and you on suspension for that Fourth of July shit show over at the NWG.”
“You know almost about as much as me,” throated Lucky.
“Almos’. But what do you know that I don’t?”
Lucky considered an answer. He weighed the satisfaction of assisting Julius by explaining how the DWP blowout hole on Poinsettia had led him to Tim Gilligan and then the abandoned airplane tire factory. Yet the connections were far clearer than the conclusion. Had Lil Rod gunned down Mush Man on Julius’s direct order? Or just as a matter of consequence? Lucky’s gut wouldn’t offer a concrete answer.
Both Lucky’s hands rested on the table, fingertips rotating the cold pizza in more counter-clockwise turns.
“You gamin’ me?” pressed Julius in a gangster pose. Eyeballs fixed on Lucky’s. “Or this about you and that little Mush motherfucker? Like personal, you know?”
Personal, indeed.
“About a ghettocide,” said Lucky.
“Ghe
tto what?”
“Both of us know nobody’s gonna answer for Mush Man,” continued Lucky. “At least, not officially.”
A slow-motion smile spread across Julius’s face.
“You a badass?” said Julius. “You and that Reaper shit. Lennox bad-asses all. Like that tat still give you permission to fuck shit up.”
“Just some old ink,” said Lucky. “This right here? Is about what happened to the Mush Man.”
“You here to justify me? That what this is?”
That’s exactly what this is.
Lucky left Julius’s question unquenched. It thickened the air so that Big Otis, who was back to filling the front door, nervously shifted from side to side. A poorly concealed .40 cal was gripped and hanging in his left hand. He was waiting for a sign. A move. A reason to perform for his boss. Julius’s pupils were packed with movement and squirreling over Lucky for twitches or tells.
Lucky remained the picture of calm. Stoic. Pokerfaced. Prepared to die, but not until he’d kicked over the two-man table and blown hollow-point punctures in both Julius and his super-sized bouncer. This was because nothing in the world spoke more to actual guilt than Julius’s playing offense. And, in a moment, it would be worth it. The fog would lift and clarity would win the day despite the mortal consequences.
“Got family?” asked Julius.
“Got nothin’ to do with nothin’,” replied Lucky.
“No? Well, let’s see,” said Julius, returning to his mobile phone and tapping out an unknown text. “’Scuse me a sec while I talk at my number one ninja. Hey. Here’s a question. You got any ninjas?” Julius paused his texting before continuing to thumb his message. “Swear to Jesus, everyone should have one or two. But this particular ninja, see? I’m tellin’ him to take care of business if I don’t make it back to my crib or my farm or any of my other responsibilities. That means if you, Deputy Lucky, gots people? My ninja’s gonna smoke ’em dead and gone. And that’s as sure as I’m sittin’ here with you and your half-eat sausage ’n’ cheese.”
Lucky recalled the recent dream sleep—the one with his made-up family seated around his mother’s dining table. The image was still etched in Lucky’s eyelids. If he closed his eyes again he’d see them—their expectant faces—each begging Lucky to be both father and husband. The feeling warmed his veins and pulsed to his limbs. He felt a cool sweat bust out on his forehead.
Jesus Christ, thought Lucky.
Why do I put myself in these positions?
“Sure. I got people,” said Lucky with purpose. “But Mush Man? All he had was his dogs. And all his dogs had was him.”
“Not so. You forgettin’ they got you? Otherwise, why you here?”
“Maybe I just came lookin’ for something to kill this pain I got.” Achingly, Lucky slow-shrugged his bullet-torn shoulder. “I could use some Vikes.”
“I look like a drug dealer?” defended Julius.
“Say you’re just a weed farmer with a big fat bodyguard?”
“Deputy fuckin’ Pill Junkie,” dismissed Julius. “Bullshit.”
“Recovering,” admitted Lucky. “But after the last forty-eight, I’m reconsidering my options.”
The conversation reached its rhetorical maxim. Neither man was eager to engage or share another thought or existential observation. All that was left between the pair were the silence and the question of who would make the first move. The second hand of Julius’s oversized Breitling continued to sweep in perfect, Swiss-engineered ticks.
As Lucky would later recall, it was the minor weep of a panel van’s brake pads putting the squeeze to a disc that drew his eyes sharply to the left, sneaking a peek through that same crack in the window paint where he’d first spied Lil Rod and his neon yellow bike. A sky blue panel van slowed to a stop. Rusty. Precisely the style of vehicle he would have profiled for a traffic stop. Broken tail lamp. De-illuminated license plate. The passenger side window obstructed with cardboard and duct tape. The vehicle screamed as either a stolen handyman’s van…
...or an assassin’s coach.
In equal motions, as the panel van’s door was shoved wide, Lucky palmed the edge of the two-top table and thrust it away from himself and into Julius. The strip mall king was caught by surprise and was struck by the table with such force it sent his chair into a backward tilt. Before Julius could catch himself, gravity took charge, tipping his chair toward the floor.
Big Otis, more concerned with Lucky’s assault than the panel van, swung his left arm upward with the fully efficient intent of unleashing a half-clip of .40 caliber slugs into the deputy. Perhaps it was his massive size that made him the initial target. In the eye-blink before Lucky witnessed the Pizza Wing’s window implode, he saw the first bullets cut through the bodyguard. They spun with such velocity the projectiles tore through Big Otis before puncturing the soda fridge in a carbonated explosion. Big Otis’s knees gave in and he dropped.
Lucky chased Julius to the floor. He hurled himself downward in hopes of surviving the spray of glass and sizzling copper. Behind the crashing window was the sound of a machine gun. The high-speed sputter sounded more like chainsaws on full throttle than gunfire. And as fast as the onslaught had been unleashed, it ceased.
Whoever they are, they’re reloading.
Lucky crawled ahead on nothing more than adrenalin and instinct. He fully expected to find Julius either dead or injured and panicked. Lucky found neither. Amidst the shattered glass and splinters, where Julius should have been after the initial tumble, remained nothing but the tipped chair.
Julius Colón had vanished.
49
The man with the Mohawk had his thoughts on ice. Not that he was distracted from his extant task. If anything he was pinche experto at eliminating the competition. Mohawk’s proficiency was such that while in the midst of accomplishing his chore, the early morning ice time at the Artesia Skate Palace was at the forefront of his thoughts.
Goddamn ice hockey.
Mohawk had grown up on Caesar Chavez Avenue as Oribe Diego Alves. Some twenty years earlier, to celebrate his fifteenth birthday, the East Los Angeles teen had borrowed his sister’s electric Lady Groomer to shear off his unruly mane save for an inch-and-a-half racing stripe of black curls. From that day forward, he was happy to go by the nickname Mohawk or more simply, Mo. But that was only if the dude was carnal.
In those adolescent years, Mo cared for two things: baseball and gang life. And being cholo came with too many vacations in state incarceration. Preston. Pine Grove. Solano. San Quentin. Each institution, a career killer for a baseball player. His final hardball hope was to someday father a son or two. He would teach them to play the game he so revered, never skipping a precious practice or missing a single inning.
Then came marriage and Mo’s discovery that he could only father daughters. His wife insisted on tubal ligation after their fourth screaming baby girl. Despite that, he signed up every daughter for park leagues, praying that softball might salve his desire to play baseball dad. But not even those pinche optic yellow softballs would stick. None of his daughters showed aptitude for sports until his last girl, Alma Juanita. As her story unfolded, Alma Jane accompanied a figure skater friend to an after-school workout at a local rink, witnessed a sloppy junior hockey scrimmage, and summarily announced her sport would be that of pucks, pads, and ceaseless early morning ice times.
Jesus.
While Mohawk found it weirdly incongruous to bundle himself in a winter parka to attend his daughter’s summer hockey practice when it was a hundred degrees outside, there was nothing unordinary for him to receive a kill order. He’d long passed on a managerial role in MS-13 organized crime in lieu of ice time. The transaction required an O.G.—or Original Gangster—like Mo to act as an on-call assassin. The order to take out Julius Colón had come from The Cartel via a criminal attorney on a yearly retainer. Mo’s instructions were to the point and required immediate action.
The early model Chevy panel van was easily stolen from
a driveway where it wouldn’t be missed. Mo had a crew of five, three fifty-five gallon drums of diesel fuel and a belt-fed M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, known amongst Marines as a SAW, partially named for its ability to cut down whatever was in its sights. While a tattooed minion tracked Julius, the sky blue van circled the tire factory-cum-weed-farm. One by one, Mo quickly assassinated the corner sentries. After, the drums were rolled out the back and left in the care of the two Mara Salvatruchas assigned to put flame to the entire cannabis crop.
Unbeknownst to Julius Colón, he’d been tailed since his midnight weight-lifting workout at the Gold’s Gym in El Segundo. But it was during the meet-up at Pizza Wing when Mo felt it opportune to strike. The driver obediently eased the Chevy van parallel to the storefront. Before it had fully braked, the panel door slid open. Behind the SAW machine gun was Mo, prone on a grease-stained carpet remnant, the weapon’s barrel propped level on a folding bi-pod. With the SAW’s mechanism primed, Mo pulled the trigger. His plan was to fire smooth and level from left to right, beginning with the bodyguard propped in the doorway. He’d glide the barrel until the primary target was cut down, then finish on the stranger shadowed behind the chalk-painted window. The SAW erupted in flame and bullets. The recoil surprised Mo in such a way that a level spray was impossible. The barrel bucked upward and, after the bodyguard was felled, getting the weapon to behave along a horizontal plane was more of a chore than anticipated.
Mo watched the sheet of window glass fall like a curtain. The old gypsum rock wall separating the kitchen from the one-table dining area disintegrated into a dense plaster fog, making any movement hard to distinguish.
Then the lights went out.
One of the SAW’s high-velocity rounds had met with so little resistance it had travelled through the first Sheetrock wall, carried the length of kitchen and bulls-eyed the fuse box adjacent to the rear door. In an array of sparks, all lights in the Pizza Wing went out.
Where are the goddamn bodies?
Experience had taught Mo to lower his sights in search of fallen men. But in the dark, the best he could do was tilt the muzzle downward and spew lead where he imagined Julius Colón had fallen. He saw only muzzle flashes and the dust-up of hot concrete as bullets skipped off the sidewalk.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 87
