Julius clamped his fingers around it and, without assistance from his right leg, pulled himself up and into the four-foot diameter spout.
The spillway’s floor was slimy. Julius’s mind briefly narrowed to his wound and what matter of infectious swill was gathering in his torn flesh. He spun and tried to crawl deeper, only to find that particular mouth had an intact protective grill.
Of course it has a grill!
To what else would the rope have been attached? The shaved hairs on Julius’s neck made themselves known, setting off a hot flash tracing all the way to his pelvis.
Julius was cornered.
In the slight ambient light, he could see into part of the channel when he peered left from the spillway’s mouth. That asshole deputy was hustling toward the underpass. In a matter of seconds, he was sure to be struck by the blackness just as Julius had been.
Julius had made a career out of recognizing even the tightest advantage. And there, while crouched in the spillway, he embraced his moment of opportunity. His eyes had adapted. He couldn’t see much, but it was surely better than what Lucky might in those initial moments of plunging darkness. Julius thought he might be able to leap upon Lucky, knocking him hard to the pavement before finishing him off in a flurry of hammer fists. But the cramping in his leg was so complete he couldn’t imagine putting together more than a controlled fall.
Then Julius remembered the rope, still in his hands. He first gathered all of it as a defense to keep Lucky from making the same discovery. Only when he reached the last length of the ratty nylon, did he picture how he would end Lucky’s life. By little more than feel Julius fashioned a noose. Simple. The plastic braiding, though worn, provided a stiffness that allowed a loop to form—one that remained wiry and oval. Like a cowboy’s lasso.
Easing to his stomach, Julius stretched himself, hung the noose and held his breath—a feat he imagined he could do to a count of fifty.
One…two…three…four…five…six…
Julius needed only to still his breathing until twenty-seven. As the deputy eased deeper into the underpass, stalking the same trickle of water just as Julius had, he stalled for a moment.
Twenty-one…twenty-two…twenty-three…
Then Lucky edged ahead just one more step. With that, Julius dropped the noose and coiled his body, pulling on the rope with everything he could muster.
As Lucky felt the rope cinched around his neck, his instinct was to fire his hands straight to his throat, slipping a finger or two inside the snare before it tightened. But before he could even manage one digit, the lasso constricted and throttled his windpipe.
Julius was going to choke him to death.
Lucky thought to spin away with his legs. Instead, he was like an untrained dog on a leash, yanked backward into compliance by his master. He found himself turned around, off balance, and back-peddling in hopes of finding an inch of slack.
Only there was no lack in tension as Julius reeled Lucky in. All the core work from all the mixed martial arts workouts had tooled Julius for this one act. Inside the hole, he was able to brace his one good leg against the sidewall and continue looping the nylon length around and around his forearm until he heard the foot scrapes stop. That’s when he knew he had him. The deputy sheriff—dangling at the end of his noose—hung by the neck, moments away from unconsciousness due to blood starvation to the brain, and then, death.
“Got you, mother-FUCKIN’ REAPER!” growled Julius, a grin behind his grinding teeth.
Lucky stretched with his toes, hoping they’d reach the floor of the channel and give just the slightest relief from the asphyxiation. How far was he off the pavement below? Two inches? An inch? Was that going to be enough to snuff him?
I’m a dying fish on a hook.
Taking a subconscious cue, Lucky began to flop, at first hoping to jar an inch or two of rope from Julius’s titan grip. Helpless to do anything with his arms, he convulsed yet again, turning himself ninety-degrees and realizing his last hope. One more spasm and Lucky had reversed himself to face the concrete wall. He released his futile grasp of the burning braid around his neck and gripped the length just above him. He pulled, getting just enough relief to plant his feet against the wall. The deputy prayed he’d found purchase enough to shift the deathly paradigm.
Lucky arched his back, ran his feet further up the wall until he found leverage enough to push off. The give he felt was human. Yet Lucky was at a precipice. His head was spinning for oxygen. Blackout and whatever followed was a second or two away. With his last measure of thrust, Lucky fired his legs. Something had to snap. Would it be his neck, the rope, or the man at the other end?
Whatever leverage Julius had earned within the diameter of the spillway was lost in an instant. One moment he could feel the life slipping from the man at the end of the rope, the next he was hurtling from the storm drain. The feet of nylon weave around his arm held tight as his body flipped around it. There was an audible popping sound as his arm dislocated followed by a crush of hard pavement against skull as gravity had its way. There were no stars for Julius. Just ear ringing and a visual whiteout that looked like television static had been plugged into his optic nerve.
Lucky didn’t register his return to terra firma. With the noose still working against him, he randomly worked his feet until he was righted, his body slumped against the wall while his fingernails dug to get beneath the nylon and free his half-crushed larynx. The rope came loose as he unleashed a gagging cough. With each inhale came a spasm of putrid convulsions. The adrenalin gave away and his head spun.
Lucky’s vision returned with a moment of strange clarity—as if the blood rushing to his skull had opened his pupils like an evening primrose collecting moonlight. Everything was grainy. But definitive. Julius was ten feet away and struggling to stand up. Without forethought, Lucky beset upon the man. He tilted and thrust himself forward until he was astride Julius with conviction and a flurry of fists.
Julius, down to only one working pair of limbs, forgot his training. While Lucky was straddling and dropping unshielded knuckles onto his face, the strip mall king twisted and gave Lucky his back. But not in surrender. Julius tried to crawl, rocking his hips and pushing off with his one good leg. He had no leverage to throw an elbow and defend himself. With all his weight, Lucky placed both hands on Julius skull and ground it into the pavement with debilitating force.
“Quit!” sucked Lucky through his teeth.
If anything, the word had a reverse effect. Julius found a knee and twisted again, this time tossing Lucky sideways. The deputy hung on, locking his own body to Julius’s. The force of the spin worked against Julius, turning him a full rotation and into the same precarious position.
Only with a very different result.
Lucky heard the splash and gurgling before he recognized that he was also wet. Any pleasure to be gained from the sensation of coolness would have to wait until Julius stopped struggling. It was the stream. The runoff from lawn sprinklers and leaking pipes, and possibly even the fire hoses at the airplane tire factory fire, ran like a charcoal ribbon down the center of the flood channel. Just two feet wide and mossy bottomed to a deep green slick. And though only four inches deep, it offered water enough to drown a man.
Lucky applied every meter of his own might, his arms locked at the elbows and hands palming the back and sides of Julius’s squirming head—all without a lick of remorse. For Lucky, all mercy had been wrung from him, leaving nothing but the will to accomplish what God wouldn’t.
Justice.
How long Lucky was astride Julius would remain unknown. He would only remember it as a fog of combat. Eventually, when Lucky was certain Julius had inhaled enough putrid liquid to drown to death three times over, he climbed away and slid himself only yards from his victim. There, Lucky sat, arms resting on his knees, returning air back to his lungs, waiting to be arrested.
Some forty feet above and a football field and a half to the north was the accident scene on the Lo
ng Beach Freeway. Lucky was able to identify the CHP units by the sound of the sirens. Five by his count. Followed by fire and EMT vehicles. In moments, Lucky reckoned, accident witnesses would recount to the Highway Patrol the foot pursuit that had spurred the road mess. He fully expected to see flashlights and patrolmen investigating the claims. Hastening his discovery was the appearance of the LA Sheriff’s helicopter. The aircraft practically fell out of the sky, held at an altitude of five hundred feet and began a tight, counterclockwise circle. The blinding spotlight ignited the freeway below.
Any moment now...
If the patrolmen didn’t come, his capture would surely be expedited when the helicopter beam crossed over. How hard would it be for the pilot or observer to miss the body lying at the edge of the overpass’s shadow and the depleted male seated a can’s kick to the side?
Minutes ticked on. Eventually forty-five of them passed. Patrolmen never moved on to scour the riverbed. Stranger still, the chopper’s white-hot beam never touched the channel bottom before it was called away to another emergency. Nobody, it would appear, was at all curious about how or why the freeway accident had occurred. Perhaps because there were no serious injuries, the initiative was to get the asphalt cleared and returned to an unchecked flow of traffic.
Or perhaps, because it was Compton, nobody gave a rat’s ass.
Lucky sat without moving until all authorities had withdrawn. He could hear the heavy tow vehicle arrive, position, and scrape the tipped box truck off the roadway above. Only when the diesel engine roared and throttled ahead was Lucky certain he was going to be left alone to give a final regard to Julius Colón’s puddle-soaked corpse.
“Way it goes, Julius,” remarked Lucky. “You’re just another ghettocide. That’s how your shit ends.”
51
The Standard Hotel. Downtown. 7:48 A.M.
Out of an abundance of concern, Cat had switched hotels. This after already paying for a second night at the downtown Crown. She’d only just crossed her suite’s threshold when the chill had rushed her. It was followed by a paranoid whisper in her head.
He knows you’re here.
That had been enough. Cat had gathered her belongings and called for a car to deliver her to The Standard. She barely slept. After a treadmill run in the hotel gym followed by a bracing shower, she was in a hurry to make the eight-thirty Mayor’s breakfast at the Westin Bonaventure.
She raided the hotel room’s mini-bar, stocking her Marni handbag with two Red Bulls and a Diet Coke. She double-checked to make sure the ring volume on her phone was loud enough so she wouldn’t miss either call or text from William Jenks, informing her that the problem had been managed. She didn’t want to calculate the political cost of such a favor. Most likely, the shady lawyer would be skinning her for years to come.
Just as long as Julius the Prick is dead.
The cab line was five riders deep so Cat chose to walk the few city blocks. Her pace was brisk and her joints felt lubricated from her jog. The sleeveless dress, thank God, was vented and cool. The five-inch heels were her big mistake. The thought of spending the entire day in the killer pumps nagged her with every new step. When a city bus swerved to a corner stop a mere quarter block ahead of her, she shouted piercingly, waved an arm, and jogged the final yards down the sidewalk.
The bus driver, a spreading fat man with a jolly grin was more than happy to keep the door open just to watch the pint-sized chiquita shimmy up his steps and jangle her purse for change.
“Thanks for waiting,” she breathed.
“Thanks for being you,” winked the driver.
Before Cat could come up with the fare, her phone sounded. She held up one finger to the driver while the other hand pounced once she saw it was William Jenks.
“And?” she asked without a hello.
“This isn’t a full confirmation,” he monotoned. “But my initial report is to expect a positive result. Talk to you later.”
The lawyer hung up, propelling Cat to thumb for Tim Gilligan in her contacts. She had to send the text she’d already composed in her head. All was going to be well. Put a cork in your panic, fat boy. Crisis averted.
“Got a route to run,” prompted the bus driver. “You got fare for me?”
“Shit. Sorry,” replied Cat, shoving both her hand and phone back into the six-hundred-dollar handbag in a frenzied search for her wallet. The Diet Coke, agitated from her sixty-yard run, breached. The snap-top on the can unsealed just enough to release the carbon-dioxide pressured goo upward in a misty spray. The caramel plume hit Cat directly in the face while succeeding in spritzing the driver and even a portion of his windshield.
“Oh, crap!” screeched Cat once she realized that what hadn’t soaked her face had detonated inside her bag, leaving all contents fizzy, sticky and ruined. She tried to save her smart phone, wiping off the moisture. The phone was done, though, already infiltrated, the electronics ruined.
“Two seconds ago you was Holly Hot Body,” laughed the bus driver. “Now you just a hot mess with no fare.”
“Fuck you!” spat Cat, turning and nearly tripping her way back to the sidewalk. The doors shut behind her and the bus roared ahead. She spun and pissed aloud, “Shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck!!!!!”
Along with Warner Brothers Studios, the distributor for all three Roadkill movies, Atom Blum’s agents at William Morris Endeavor, had been quick to step up to organize a memorial service for the tragically murdered boy wonder. The service was set for Sunday at Warner Brothers’ storied Burbank lot, an empty soundstage reserved to stand in for a church. Atom’s favorite production designer, German-born Hans Heiger, was tasked to oversee the studio’s art department appropriately dress the set and erect seating for at least one thousand slick-suited mourners. The event would be invitation-only, each envelope hand-delivered via studio messenger. Press would have access, but only to cover celebrity comings and goings. A marketing honcho floated the idea of hurrying up the release of a Roadkill DVD boxed set to take full advantage of all the overwhelming goodwill aimed at the deceased movie director, not to mention the mountains of free publicity.
LA County Assistant Sheriff, Paul McGill, received his personal invitation at the Department’s Temple Street office. The gold-embossed envelope was waylaid on his secretary’s desk, only feet from the utilitarian armchair where Shia Saint George awaited alongside Steve Wimminger for an audience with the department’s second highest domo.
For Shia it had all felt horribly rushed. Only hours earlier she’d been well outside her orders and comfort zone playing sidekick to Lucky Dey while he’d nearly tortured Tim Gilligan into giving up information. They had no warrant. There had been no arrest or scintilla of due process. Her only defense for her part was the recording she’d made for the U.S. attorney on whose authority she’d been spying.
“You look great,” offered Wimmer, his tailored suit bellowing power lawyer with every pinstripe. “And that’s considering you probably haven’t slept much, yeah?”
“Yeah,” was all Shia could muster. She wiped her sweaty palms on a pair of navy slacks while keeping her eyes focused on the four-inch crack in the Assistant Sheriff’s door. She could hear the man’s murmur from the other side, as he paced and carried on with a conference call. Since hearing from Wimmer that they’d scored a noon meeting with Paul McGill, she’d been shredding her brain for any memory of having met the man. The best she could summon was that she’d shaken his hand at her Academy graduation ceremony. Would he remember her? Did he have preconceived opinions regarding female deputies? Black women in general?
After a twenty-five-minute wait, Wimmer rose—that familiar hitch to his gait—and insisted on meeting with the Department’s number two prior to inviting Shia to join the discussion.
“Just foaming the runway,” Wimmer calmed her. “I know this feels fast, but opportunity is everything in politics.”
“Feeling over my head,” was the best Shia could reply.
“No worries,” Wimmer fin
ished. “You’ve got the power of the federal government covering your adorable ass.”
The Assistant Sheriff’s door must have been defective, she reasoned. For after Wimmer had been ushered into the inner sanctum, gravity had delivered the wooden door back to its precise, four-inch deficit. Shia shifted in her seat and attempted to listen. The Assistant Sheriff’s murmur and Wimmer’s higher pitched whine were impossible to decipher, making for a torturous swath of time. Twenty minutes became thirty. Thirty became forty-five.
Foaming the runway? Or buttering the goose?
The secretary’s desk unit buzzed. Without answering the handset, the fat-fingered deputy with an unfortunate chin spoke.
“They’re ready for you,” said the deputy.
Shia rose and pressed her fingers to the door panel. The door opened to reveal a modest office that was all Sheriffs to the khaki and green marrow. Utilitarian and dull, with walls and a window buffet table adorned in service accolades—the clear and present collection of a man who’d dedicated a lifetime to law enforcement.
Standing behind his desk was Assistant Sheriff Paul McGill, a tall and triathlete-thin sixty-five years old. His uniform was creased and freshly pressed. A pair of romantic blue eyes was unable to refrain from giving Shia a heterosexual once-over.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 89
