by Jeff Shelby
His address was just off Balboa, in the Mount streets, so named because the streets were named after the mountains of the world. I turned right on Mt. Arafat and then right again on Mt. Everest.
Not something you do every day.
I found Pluto’s house near the end of a cul-de-sac on Mt. Everest. The ranch home was a faded gray, with a giant plum tree in the front yard. A beat-up basketball hoop rested above the garage and the grass in the yard was a mix of green and brown. A bright blue Ford pickup was parked in the driveway.
I walked up the drive to find both the screen door and front door wide open.
I poked my head in the entryway. “Hello?”
No one responded. I stepped onto the small tiled area just inside the door.
The living room had been ransacked. A TV was on the carpeting, smashed to pieces. The furniture was flipped over, pushed into a pile in the middle of the room.
I turned to the dining room. The table was dumped on its side, the oak chairs splintered into jagged hunks of wood. An overhead light had been yanked off the ceiling and crushed into glass shards.
My heart picked up speed.
Someone had issues with Peter Pluto’s house.
I heard footsteps down the hallway off the dining room and stepped back, reaching for my gun, then realizing it was stuck in the glove box, impounded with my Jeep.
A guy somewhere in his twenties with a shaved head emerged. He was about my height at six-three, but thicker. He wore a gray T-shirt, dirty jeans, and scuffed black boots. The scowl on his face didn’t detract from the quarter-sized black swastika tattooed just above his left eyebrow.
He paused when he saw me, then took a step in my direction. “Who the fuck are you?”
“That was gonna be my question for you.”
The scowl on his face tightened and I noticed what looked like blood on the knuckles of his right hand.
He took another step toward me, his small eyes narrowing. “You fuckin’ with me?”
I held up my hands. “Just wondering if you were the one who did the redecorating in here.”
He stared at me for a moment, completely unafraid and completely angry. He glanced down the hallway from where he’d come, then back at me. His expression slowly changed. The snarl morphed into an arrogant, evil grin exposing yellow teeth. He shook his head. “Dude, you walked into the wrong house.”
Not the wrong house, but maybe the wrong time. “Did I?”
He laughed, as if I didn’t realize how stupid I actually was. “Yeah, you did. Wanna tell me why you’re here?”
“Not really.”
He shook his head again. “I’m not asking, dude. Why you here?”
He looked meaner than me, a veteran of fights that he’d probably instigated. But he was younger, which meant he wasn’t wiser.
I followed his lead and stepped toward him. “Tell you what. Before I kick your ass and call the cops, why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
His eyes flared and he stepped forward, a right hook coming at my head. I stepped inside of it and jammed the heel of my hand into his jaw. He fell backward against the wall of the dining room and slumped to the floor.
I stood over him for a moment. He refocused his eyes and brought his hand to his mouth, a thick stream of blood now coming out onto his chin.
“You done talking back now?” I asked him.
He looked at the blood on his hand, then at me. The slow, ugly grin came back, his teeth now red rather than yellow. “Yeah, I guess I am.” He looked past me and lifted his chin. “Mo’s gonna take over.”
I turned around and after getting a look at the guy, I just assumed Mo was short for Mountain.
He was about six-foot-seven and a minimum of three hundred pounds of muscle. His nose was so crooked, it had to have been broken half a dozen times in half a dozen places. His gray eyes were empty, just staring at me. He wore a thick silver hoop in each ear. The dirty white tank top on his body exposed arms that were covered completely in tattoos. Women, birds, and swords, from what I could make out. His black jeans were torn in multiple places and the toes of his construction boots were caked in blood.
His head was also shaved and the phrase WHITE IS RIGHT was tattooed just above his forehead in simple black letters.
He looked around me at his partner. “You alright, Lonnie?”
“I’m fine,” Lonnie said from behind me.
“Want me to hurt him?” Mo asked, much in the same way one would ask if you needed a ride somewhere.
“Yep.”
I didn’t like the way my future was being discussed without my involvement. I wasn’t scared of Lonnie, but Mo looked less than human and I didn’t see a way out of this.
“He see anything?” Mo asked, still looking around me.
“Don’t think so. Make sure it stays that way.”
Mo gave a quick nod and moved at me faster than I expected. His right hand grasped my forearm and he pulled me forward. His left fist crashed into my stomach like a battering ram. Every ounce of air exploded from my body. The battering ram reloaded and slammed into my temple, an ugly rainbow of colors exploding in the backs of my eyes. I felt my knees buckle, but his hold on my forearm kept me up.
Lonnie walked around behind Mo, showing me another bloody grin. “Now you wanna tell me what you’re here for?”
A wave of nausea swept through my body as Mo held me up like rag doll. I knew I was in trouble, but there was no way I was giving in to some racist punk.
“Fuck you,” I managed, trying to ready myself for what I knew was coming.
“You a friend of Pete’s?” Lonnie asked.
I didn’t answer.
“How about his little brother, the missing Linc?” he asked, grinning at me.
I looked away from him and tried to catch my breath.
Lonnie’s smile changed to a frown. “You came here for a reason. What was it?”
I turned back to him. “Fuck you some more.”
Lonnie backed up, then kicked me in the stomach and the air rushed out of me again. Mo held me up.
“You don’t wanna talk now?” Lonnie said, moving toward me. “That’s cool. I’m gonna have my man Mo work you over a little bit. Not kill you. Just make you wish he had. But I need to know why you showed up here today, man. So when you wake up…if you wake up…think about me. Because I’ll be around. And the next time you see me?” He leaned closer. “You’ll be too scared to tell me to fuck off. And that’s when you’ll tell me what you were here for. And that’s when I’ll kill you, asshole.” He looked at Mo. “Have at him, dude.”
Mo spun me around and stared at me with the same empty look. His fist crashed into my temple again and my legs gave way completely. He tossed me to the ground, my face smashing into the carpet.
Lonnie leaned down over me, his breath warm and foul. “Don’t fuck with us, dude. Not ever. You can’t win.” I could feel him right next to my ear. “And remember. Next time, you talk and then you die.”
I groaned and rolled over on my back. Lonnie stepped away and Mo took his place, blocking out everything behind him. He knelt down beside me and pulled back his fist, ready to drop the battering ram once again on my face.
I turned away, as if doing so might protect me, and my eyes locked on something at the end of the hallway from where Lonnie had first emerged.
As Mo prepared to put me to sleep, I hoped that I would live to remember seeing what appeared to be Peter Pluto’s body at the end of the hallway.
Seven
Warm dirt pressed against my face. Blood pooled in my mouth. My body throbbed. I felt tired, like I hadn’t slept in days. I slowly forced one eye open.
Sunlight glared against the brush.
Everything was sideways.
Where was I?
I coughed, spasms of pain ricocheting through my stomach and back, and spit out a mouthful of blood. I lifted my head, needing to see where I was. My neck shivered as it tried to support the weight.
Tumbleweeds. Dirt. Gravel. The desert?
I laid my head down again, the ground hot and rough against my cheek. The warmth of the ground made me want to close my eyes and go back to sleep.
I lifted my head again and twisted in the other direction.
More dried brush, more tumbleweeds, a body.
I twisted my torso in that direction.
I heard someone scream, the noise echoing in the distance, and realized it was me.
I got my elbows beneath me and pushed up and felt myself start to slide backward.
I was on a slope.
Slopes in the desert didn’t make any sense to me. Nothing made sense.
I stabbed my toes into the ground to stop the sliding.
Focusing on the body, I crawled toward it on my elbows, up the slope. My legs were stiff and heavy and I couldn’t get them to bend.
The body was only about ten feet away, but it felt like a hundred. My elbows ached. And bled. Nausea worked its way through my body like a current.
I laid my head down again, listening to my gasps for air. Everything was spinning slowly.
I forced my head up again.
Peter Pluto looked back at me, his eyes empty and his face devoid of any life.
I dropped my head down on the earth again and wondered if I was about to join him.
Eight
I tried to raise my eyelids, but they felt like they were sealed shut with concrete. My head pounded. I was on my back and I could feel my arms and legs, but they felt four times heavier than they should have.
I squeezed my eyes shut, then forced them to open slightly.
The bright lights of the hospital room shocked me and I shut my eyes again.
At least the son of a bitch hadn’t killed me.
I heard movement to my left and I rotated my head in that direction, the muscles in my neck feeling like taut rubber bands. I got my eyes half open.
Liz was sitting in a chair, looking at me.
“You awake?” she asked.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I swallowed hard and wondered who placed the invisible boulder on my chest.
I tried again. “Yeah.” My voice sounded distant and old.
“You don’t sound like it.”
I turned my head back to stare at the ceiling. “Awake. Not alive.”
“You’re in the hospital,” she said. “Mission Bay.”
“Okay.”
“You’ve been here about twelve hours.”
That surprised me, because it felt like just minutes before that Mo had been planting his fists into my body and I’d been lying somewhere with Peter Pluto.
I looked back at Liz. She wore her black running tights, a blue sweatshirt, and Nike running shoes. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
“You find me?” I asked, my voice coming back closer to my head now. I fumbled with the glass of water I’d noticed next to my bed and took a long drink.
She shook her head. “No. Couple of kids stumbled across you in a canyon in Clairemont.”
Not the desert. A canyon. That explained the slope.
My head felt puffy. I set the glass back on the table and looked at my arms. No tubes or wires hooked into me.
“They just beat the crap out of you,” she said. “No broken bones, no real bleeding. They knew what they were doing.”
I had learned that the hard way.
She leaned back in the chair. “What happened, Noah?”
I stared at the ceiling again, trying to gain some focus. Lonnie’s words were ringing in my ears. He wanted me to wake up. He wanted me to hurt. And he wanted me to feel afraid.
He won.
I closed my eyes.
“I’ve sat here for six hours,” Liz said. “Call came in to Wellton, he called me. Not because I was on duty, but because he thought I’d want to know. I hate that he was right, but he was.” She paused and folded her arms across her chest. “I’ve sat here, looking at you, worrying about you, trying to figure out why. I haven’t figured it out yet. And I don’t know if I’m going to. Ever. But there’s no way you’re going to lie there and not talk to me.” She bit her bottom lip for a moment. “So tell me what happened, Noah, because if you don’t, I am done wasting another second of my life thinking about you.”
“Christ, Liz,” I said, my tongue feeling lost in my mouth. “I’m trying to clear my head. Give me a second.”
I opened my eyes and kept them on the white ceiling, feeling the pangs in my chest each time I exhaled. I remembered her looking away from me at the apartment building.
“I thought you already were done with me anyway,” I said, looking at her.
She shifted in her chair, then glanced over me to the window. “I’m not here to talk about us. Now’s not the time.”
“Why not?”
“Because if we try that, I’d probably end up kicking your ass and I think you’ve had all you can handle for now.”
I wasn’t sure if it was what had happened to me or if it was just being near her again, but the ice had been broken on the freeze-out between us and I wanted it to continue to melt away.
“When’s the time gonna come, then?” I asked. “For us?”
She moved her gaze from the window to me. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it will.”
I stared at her for a moment, then went back to concentrating on the ceiling.
“Huge,” I finally said.
“What?”
“He was huge.”
“Who?”
“Mo.”
“Who’s Mo?”
“The mountain that fell on me.”
I told her about working for Peter Pluto, what I remembered about going to the house, about finding Lonnie and then Mo finding me.
“Skinheads?” she asked after I told her about the tattoos.
I tried to nod, but it came off more like a spasm. “Hard-core. Aryan Nations stuff.” I cleared my throat and tried to get my voice to sound normal. “I think they killed Pluto.”
Liz stood and came over to the edge of the bed. “They found a body with yours. No ID.”
The memory of crawling up next to him was still hazy, but I’d recognized him. “That was him.”
She nodded. “I’ll get John the name and we’ll check on next of kin. You know if this Peter Pluto was into that racist crap?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, let me know if you hear anything,” she said, as she came over and sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle me. “You’re gonna be okay.”
I looked away from her and toward the window on the other side of the room. “Yep.”
“None of it’s permanent. You’re gonna hurt like hell, but it’ll go away.”
I nodded. I knew that. It was the mental part that I had questions about. I couldn’t help wondering if I could’ve done something to avoid it all. Not taken the case, not gone to the house, not gone in without a gun. But all of those were things I normally did. I didn’t want to change because of this, alter the way I thought and the way I acted. But through all the pain I could feel something shifting in me, a combination of fear and anger that was shifting even as I tried to stop it.
“I called Carter a little bit ago. Didn’t know who else to call,” Liz said. “Got his voice mail, told him you were here.”
“Thanks.”
She stood up and I could feel her eyes on me. “I’m gonna go.”
I turned to her. “Okay. Thanks. For coming.”
“I’ll check on you in a couple of days.” She hesitated for a moment, then touched my hand quickly, covering it with hers. “There’s something else, though, Noah.”
“What?”
“You have your ID with you when you went in?”
I thought about it. “Yeah. My wallet. In the pocket of my shorts.”
Liz nodded. “I figured. But it wasn’t on you.” She paused. “They probably took it. Most likely for the money or credit cards.”
I knew what she w
as getting at. “But they know where I live.”
“If they wanted to know, yeah, they do now.”
It didn’t surprise me, but hearing it out loud made my stomach jolt.
“We found your rental, too,” she said. “Up in University City, a little beat up. I’m gonna talk to John and I’ll get your Jeep back to your place tomorrow.”
A tiny, selfish voice popped into my head. The guy who was supposed to pay me and for that rental car was dead. A couple of days in the hospital were sure to jack up my insurance premium. Money was the last thing I wanted to think about, but the concern was there like a fly that wouldn’t die.
“Okay,” I said.
“I’ll be in touch,” Liz said, giving my hand a quick squeeze, then heading for the door. “I’m glad you’re alright.”
I didn’t know that I really was, but I watched her go without saying anything, as the fear and anger in my body and in my thoughts continued to work themselves together in a gathering fury that I wasn’t sure how to handle.
Nine
A nurse came in bright and early the next morning and woke me up to inform me that since there was nothing further they could do for me, I was on my way out. She assured me I’d be fine and said she’d be back shortly with some papers that needed my signature.
Gee, thanks.
The pain had kept me awake for parts of the night. My limbs were heavy and sore and my chest felt like a tractor had been parked on it. When I was finally able to get myself out of bed to use the bathroom, my back cracked and burned the more I tried to straighten it.
The mirror in the bathroom told the same story. The circles around my eyes were a myriad of reds and purples. I had a huge split in my bottom lip and more bruises on each cheek.
The nurse returned and I signed the discharge papers, refused the wheelchair trip out, and was pulling on my clothes from the closet when Carter walked into the room. He wore brown board shorts and a bright purple T-shirt. He looked out of breath.
“Sorry,” he said, frowning. “I was in LA.”
