Frosty looked hard at his captor. Not certain at all if he could trust the man or the moment.
“You just lettin’ me off?” asked Frosty. “Like that?”
“I know who you are. You know where I live. Maybe that makes us straight. Maybe inside church there you can find a new plan.”
The young hood continued with the stare-down. As if still waiting for a trap door to open and send him to hell.
“You know, little Lady Justice did me tight,” said Frosty, rubbing the bruises. “That blondie girl. She yours?”
“Kind of adopted each other. Long story.”
“She was gonna bust on my head till I was smoked.”
“Probably.”
“Woulda served me right, too.”
Lucky agreed, then reached across and pushed the door open.
“Not lyin’,” said Frosty. “Was my mom callin’ why I didn’t do it.”
“And here you are. So go get it done.”
“Hey,” said Frosty, his expression finally shifting from permanent distrust to a semi-brightened, near smile. “Why don’t you, ya know? Come in. Meet Momma. My Gran’nana.”
“Me? Church?” Lucky shook his head. “That ship sailed for me awhile ago.”
“Not too late for me. Not too late for you.”
“Git on,” impressed Lucky. “Or we can start this all over again.”
Frosty’s chin dipped. He understood. He climbed out, shut the car door without looking back, and tried to keep a straight back while limping to the front door. When he swung it open, singing voices and music poured out into the night, reaching Lucky’s open window as he pulled away from the curb. The upbeat tune, lost in the rush of air circulating through the ’99, stuck in Lucky’s ears for the four-minute drive to the canine shelter where he’d boarded Mush Man’s team of mutts.
The elderly couple who ran the shelter were only too glad to return the animals, hoping Lucky would find the street beasts a happy home. Each of the dogs had been washed and brushed out. The four-legged crew smelled of detergent and baby powder as they happily piled into the backseat, tongues out, panting and drooling. Oprah, who felt deserving of the front passenger side, settled in for the best angle to lick at Lucky’s right ear.
“Enough of that,” said Lucky. He reached into the console, came up with a fresh bottle of Benadryl capsules and dry swallowed a pair with the same verve with which he’d once sucked back pain killers.
Hello. My name’s Lucky and I’m a Benadryl addict.
“Look at you,” Lucky said to the mutts in his rearview mirror. “Now what the hell am I gonna do with you?”
Thinking the animals might want to bark a final goodbye to where they last saw their beloved Mush Man, Lucky wheeled the ’99 into a U-turn and pointed it toward Poinsettia and the DWP reconstruction. Despite being a Friday night, Compton appeared quiet, darker, and more subdued than normal—as if the city was still hung-over from the Fourth of July celebrations.
Turning from Rose Street to East Peck, Lucky cruised slowly as if on patrol. Perhaps a force of habit. Or even as a way of slow-rolling himself back home. Gonzo would be awake and expecting an exhaustive debrief.
Wait until she sees the mutts.
A bicycle appeared from his right, the rider hopping the curb and busting into the street with little regard for driver or car. Lucky tapped the brakes, less to avoid a collision than to give the rider more room.
The hairs on his forearms prickled as the air around him took on a static charge. The tea-cup sized cyclist, weaving his neon yellow mountain bike in and out of Lucky’s headlights, glanced backward with an almost snide purse of his lips. Had Lil Rod recognized Lucky from the sidewalk before he had dashed in front in such a taunting gesture? Or was it just because Lucky was a white dude in a ’99 Crown Vic? An obvious police officer, off-duty or not, and surely worth a second or two of cheap ghetto provocation. Whatever reason, the player on the bike was neither packing heat nor holding drugs. Otherwise, no respecting gangbanger would deign to play chicken with an obvious cop.
For half a block, Lil Rod continued his serpentine tack, swinging the bike from curb to curb, keeping within the wash from the headlamps.
What would it take? thought Lucky.
To finish off the little killer would mean little more than switching off the headlights and a quick and clean acceleration of Detroit horsepower. The ’99’s front grill would swallow whatever was in its path. Fatal hit-and-runs were epidemic in the Southland, especially in the sectors where better than a third of the drivers were uninsured and nearly impossible to track down.
What’s one more bloodstain on Compton blacktop?
The urge was there. Present. With a touch more gas he could right the ugly wrong that was Lil Rod.
“If only I didn’t have other plans,” breathed Lucky, barely audible enough for even the dogs to register. “Soon enough, little banger. You ’n’ me’ll dance. Soon. Enough.”
Part VI
Saturday
55
It was a crusher of headache. Advil, Anacin, Tylenol. None had eased the aftereffects of Wimmer’s bender to end all benders. With the clock on his dash another minute beyond the 10:00 A.M. start time of the Pasadena First Presbyterian AA meeting, he’d hoped that the cobwebs might clear enough so he could accept the help he so desperately needed.
Prior to that Saturday, Wimmer had never classified himself as an addict or an alcoholic. It had been a ruse, he’d explained to his wife, to get near the subject of his investigation, Sheriff’s Deputy Lucky Dey. After a few initial meetings, he’d been secretly displeased—hurt even—that the former Lennox Reaper hadn’t so much as recognized him, especially considering their ugly history. Once Wimmer moved beyond the disappointment, he had been surprised to find he’d actually begun to enjoy the meetings. The sharing. The camaraderie of wounded men and women, all trying to bootstrap themselves back into the land of the healthy mind and body. It was uplifting. Spiritual. Even if Wimmer considered himself no more than a tourist.
Then came the bender. After the crushing and embarrassing defeat he’d suffered at the hands of the LA County Sheriff’s Department—escorted out of the Temple Street building by armed deputies—he’d bypassed his parking space at the Federal Building for the valet stand at Westwood’s W Hotel. He’d handed his credit card to the bartender and begun a drinking binge that had lasted up until closing. Too drunk to drive home, he’d ponied up for a room and continued the bender by guzzling down the alcoholic contents of the minibar before passing out next to the toilet.
When Wimmer woke, he couldn’t imagine driving anywhere but to an AA meeting. Was he truly addicted? He didn’t know anything beyond the compulsion he felt to sit and be motivated by his broken brethren.
At fourteen minutes past the hour, Wimmer hobbled from his car, fought off the urge to dry heave into the gutter, and followed the brick footpath leading to the church’s basement. The meeting, in full progress, was stuffed to the gills—sixty, seventy-five strong. He found a folding chair in the rear right and lowered his head into his hands in hopes the throbbing would subside. His ears, despite the thumping of his heart in his head, were able to tune in to the words from the audio-assisted portable lectern propped front and center.
“…pleased for all the shares,” growled the speaker, a shaggy man in a flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows. “And we’re gonna pick up on ’em after we get our speaker through. But he’s got somewhere to be so I’m happy to turn the mic over. Lend your ears to my man, Luck.”
Wimmer thought he’d heard the man incorrectly. At least initially. After all, what were the odds? Yet despite how much it hurt to sit up, straighten his spine and twist his neck ten degrees, Wimmer could see the figure easing up to the front of the room was none other than Lucky Dey.
Lucky’s left arm was in a sling strapped over a faded t-shirt. At first, he appeared wholly uncomfortable to be addressing his fellow alcoholics. He had to bend down to the microphone to say:
“Hey. My name is Lucky and I’m an addict.”
“Hello, Lucky,” chimed most of the others assembled, hardly in practiced unison. It sounded more like a group grumble than an actual call to answer.
Wimmer’s first inclination was to rise and skulk to the exit. He had no curiosity whatsoever as to what Lucky might want to impart to the gathering of so many lost and like-minded. But the idea of even standing made Wimmer’s stomach flip so violently he feared he might vomit on the spot. So Wimmer remained from fear of embarrassment, butt glued to the chair, hands cradling his immense forehead.
“Wait,” began Lucky. “First there’s this.”
He stepped away from the lectern and lifted his left leg onto an empty chair. With his one good arm, he rolled up his denim pants until his left calf tattoo was fully exposed.
“I know,” said Lucky. “Just ink. S’pose there’s enough of that in here. And this one’s no more special than any other, except that it’s mine… If you can’t see it too good, it’s a grim reaper tat. The reaper there, if you can make it out, he’s holding his scythe in one hand and, in the other there, he’s got a pistol. Also there’s a number. Seventy-three. That’s me. I’m number seventy-three.”
With his cuff returned to normal, Lucky resumed his pose behind the microphone. To Wimmer’s view, the deputy looked unrehearsed and to be searching for his next sentence.
“Why the reaper? I guess is the next question. I guess the best way to explain it is that if you were a deputy sheriff in a certain division, it had a certain kind of meaning. A club…or a brotherhood. To get a Reaper tat you had to be invited. And a deputy didn’t get invited unless he’d been in a good shoot. That’s a justified gunfight, for any of you who don’t know. Mine was my second year. Barely smart enough to keep the shit off my shoes. Anyway, we answered a call to a domestic dispute, had to kick down a door. That’s when the bullets started. I got off a good coupla pulls and knocked down this big Mexican dude who’d been kickin’ the snot out of his baby mama. He lived. So did I. Month later, I got asked to be a Reaper.”
Lucky tried not to peruse the attendees. He worried that catching a face or two of his fellow addicts might throw him—cause him to lose his already less than sanguine place. So instead, he focused on the back wall of the basement room and tried not to ramble.
“So it’s not just about a tat. There’s a meaning to it. And an oath. And, if you were on the outside lookin’ in, it might’ve looked like Reapers were some gang inside the Sheriff’s Department. And who knows? Maybe we were. And maybe, in the course of our duty, we looked after each other just a little bit harder than the other deputies. Can’t say it didn’t feel good to belong because there was trust. Real trust. Reapers, man, we had each other covered. And because we had each other we were able to do some serious policing. We saved lives and we cracked heads. Who knows? Maybe we cracked one of yours.”
The room erupted in laughter, some of it a nervous truth. It buoyed Lucky. His shoulders relaxed and he stopped shifting his weight from side to side.
“Yeah. And we did some stuff that I’m not proud of. Now that I look back on it. But what’s moving ahead without hindsight, you know? Some of us were liked. Some of our fellow sheriffs hated the ground we walked on. Cursed our existence. Some wanted to be like us. You know. In the club. Part of the gang. Which is understandable. Who doesn’t want to be wanted? I got that then and I still get it now.
“That said, there was this one guy. Two-year deputy. I’d been in maybe five years at that point. But this guy, word around was that he wanted to be a Reaper in the worst way. Always trying to catch rides with one of us. Hang after shift. Serious case of the wannabes. Right? You know the kinda guy. But this one guy, see, he knows that to be a Reaper—to be inside the circle of trust—it first starts with that good shoot. Righteous use of deadly force. In defense of your life, one of your fellow sheriffs, or the public. And them’s be the rules, as they say.”
Lucky’s eyes swirled, picturing the time and place while hoping to keep hold of his train of thought. His story was winding to a close. And he didn’t want to blow the punch line. Otherwise the point would have turned moot with the final syllable.
“Was New Year’s Eve. It’s your basic ghetto countdown to midnight. So this wannabe...the guy who so desperately wants to be part of the club, he stations himself outside this party house just shy of the clock striking twelve. Place is hopping. Music. Party bangers spilling out into the street. Then comes the five, four, three, two… You know. Wannabe guy, he knows some dumb drunk sonofabitch is gonna pull out his pistola and shoot it into the air when the clock hits midnight. You see where I’m goin’, right? Twelve o’clock. Cholo pulls his gun and unloads his magazine into the sky. Full clip. Wannabe Reaper, he’s there and ready—and a good shot, I might add. Lets loose a single round that snaps the cholo right in the butt cheek. Right there.”
Lucky turned sideways and used an index finger to indicate a spot on his left buttocks. Amused titters rolled across the top of the gathering, as did a few sympathetic groans.
“Well, wannabe guy writes it up as self-defense. And with nobody but a bunch of drunk party bangers, who but the cholo with the gun is gonna argue? Shooting passes muster with the brass. And wannabe guy is up in all our grills expecting to be made a Reaper, tattoo and all… Course, none of us bought it. We had our snitches. Wasn’t long before we knew what really went down. And we told him as much. That’s when he threatened to expose our little brotherhood. As if he had anything on us he could prove. Somethin’ though, we figured, had to be done. We drew straws. I got the short one… Few shifts later, it was arranged that me and wannabe guy shared a black-and-white. Maybe an hour, two, we’re in a foot pursuit after some nothin’ necklace snatch. I let wannabe take the lead. I hang back. Un-skin my service weapon…”
At last, Lucky allowed his eyes to survey the other faces of those gathered, pleased to see every man and woman in the room on the edge of his or her respective seat.
“So I popped wannabe guy in the ass,” Lucky finished. “Left butt cheek. Almost clean. Creased the top of his hammy. Asshole washed out on a medical.”
Shifting his weight again, Lucky tried to sum up.
“There a moral here? Yeah. Somewhere. That’s for you to figure out, same way it’s for me to figure out. Is who we are what we’ve done? Or what we’re gonna do about it? And that’s what I got to say. Thanks.”
Lucky stepped away from the lectern to polite applause. Some amused. Others shocked yet full of thought. Lucky shook the lead speaker’s hand, then cut down the side of the gathering with what appeared a dead reckoning for the exit. Only once he approached the last row, he retarded his gait until he was standing alongside Wimmer. Lucky waited a few counts for the U.S. Attorney to meet his gaze.
“Bet you thought I didn’t remember you,” said Lucky, plain and without recrimination. “But yeah. I recognized my work when I saw that giddy-up of yours.”
“Go fuck yourself,” was Wimmer’s only reply.
“One day at a time,” winked Lucky. “One day at a time.”
And that was that.
Lucky crashed through the basement door, and though he’d have liked to go at the stairs two at a time, he climbed in pained single steps until he was on level land. There he fished his Ray-Bans out of the sling, let the LA sun spank his broken face, and walked on.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Velvet Elvis Entertainment
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Tarzana, California 91356
Copyright © 2016 by Doug Richardson
Cover design by Karen Richardson
Cover photo: Maciej Bledowski/Shutterstock.com
More informatio
n at www.dougrichardson.com
ISBN: 978-0-9964563-0-2
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Velvet Elvis Entertainment.
A Sneak Peak at American Bang: A Lucky Dey Thriller by Doug Richardson
Woodland Hills, California. 6:30 p.m.
Johnny B. was frustrated.
All he wanted was a Philly steak sandwich with no cheese and a Diet Coke with a slice of lemon to go. As orders went, he thought it was a no brainer. Even in his stubborn mind, he couldn’t imagine how the simple request had turned into a hang-up.
“Thirteen-inch Philly steak,” Johnny B. repeated to the Asian woman behind the counter. Korean Nazi, the teen complained to himself. For him it was like hitting the reset button on one of his video games. He tried to sound polite, but understood that what felt polite coming out of his mouth sometimes didn’t come off that way. “No cheese cuz I don’t like cheese. A large Diet Coke with a slice of lemon. And that’s to go, puh-lease.”
“I got all that,” annoyed the sub shop’s co-owner and manager. She was half Johnny Boy’s size—barely a hundred pounds under her white shirt and apron. Her face was as wrinkled as a dried fruit. “But I say to you, ‘No lemon for Diet Coke.’”
“But the man before—he got a lemon with his iced tea,” argued Johnny B. without a tinker’s clue concerning the line of diners queuing up behind him. The line was out the door of the tiny take-out shop that was little more than a counter and an old, yellowed backlit menu board hanging over a one-man kitchen.
“I say no lemon for Diet Coke,” repeated the old woman.
“If I order iced tea do I get a lemon slice?” clarified Johnny B.
“You want ice tea now? You just say you want Diet Coke.”
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 92
