by Kirk Alex
CHAPTER 326
The killers were talking again. Marvin was saying something.
“FBI and CIA? That be some heavy shit, man.”
“You know it.”
“What chu you think they was after, Cecil?”
“None of your fucking business. Einstein was under constant surveillance. Edward Teller—the genius who created the atom bomb—FBI monitored his every move.”
“No shit? How you know all that?”
“I make it a point. When you’re intelligent and know things, the assholes put surveillance on you.”
“You think Marty Roscoe and his old lady could be FBI?”
“Those two buffoons?” Biggs gave Marvin a quick look, then shrugged his shoulders. He needed to watch the road, the side mirrors. “You never know, you just never know. They’ve got one convincing act if they are, though. It takes some real talent to appear belligerent with such conviction. If they are FBI or CIA, then I take my hat off to them. That’s some slick con they’ve got going just to get close to me.”
“FBI and CIA. That be too heavy, man.”
Biggs shot Marvin Muck a long, hard stare. “Are you a fucking FBI agent?”
“What? Me?”
“Yeah, you, motherfucker.”
“No way, Hoss.”
“You heard me. You’re spying on me. They sent you to keep an eye on me. They killed my mother and now they’re trying to get to me. They used a jackhammer on my mother.”
“We be partner’, man. I don’t be knowin’ no FBI, no CIA from nothin’, Cecil. Told you before. How many time’ I got to say it? You be puttin’ me on, ain’t you?”
“Don’t ever cross me, Marvin. . . .”
CHAPTER 327
They were out of North Hollywood, driving past Griffith Park on the right (lots of trees and dark, winding roads that made it a dumping site with potential—not that it would have been a wise choice, but rather one of convenience).
Well, he would stay on the freeway. It was simply a matter of deciding where to either dump or bury the bodies.
The San Berdoo Mountains were always good, only too far to travel this time. He had a reason for wanting to drive to Altadena instead and the graveyard in the foothills out there.
Marvin was looking at his clothes, fingering the congealing blood that had gotten past the duster and stained the clothes he wore. Most of the blood on him was Bertha’s blood. Biggs had his share of blood stains, but did not appear as bad, as he’d had the sense to wash most of it out right after the massacre.
“Lookit me. I sure could use me some new skins: pants, socks; kicks, too. Got blood on everything.”
“Should have washed it out right away.”
“Blood don’t wash out.”
“It most certainly does, so long as you don’t let it dry.” Biggs added: “We’ll get to a graveyard, Free Ride, and dig you up a wardrobe. How does that sound?”
“It always be rags off some stiff for me. For you, it be new skins off the rack.”
“When was the last time you saw me spend money on new clothes?”
“Can’t say.”
“That’s right. Goodwill has always been good enough.”
“Why don’t it be good enough for me, then?”
Biggs told him to check in the back for a laundry bag with some clothes in it. Someone always had to be looking out for them. Obviously Marvin didn’t have the sense.
“We can’t have you about looking like that. What would happen if a roller stopped us for a moving violation?”
“Yeah? What chu gonna tell the roller when they aks why you got the Trusty makeup on?”
“His mother requested it, before I invaded her shitter and unloaded in her mouth.”
“You ain’t just bad—you super bad.”
“Beats being sad, don’t it?” Biggs drew one of his business cards with the Bordello of Fear logo, name; phone & fax numbers, rates, and the rest of it.
“I seen it.”
“It’s a business. I’m a businessman. Preacher, teacher, gawker, stalker.”
“And clown.”
“And clown.”
Marvin found the bag. Brought it to the front with him and was attempting to change his shirt and pants. “I ain’t arguin’. Didn’t expec’ to get this much blood on me. It don’t always be this messy, Cecil, you know that. Didn’t even know we wuz gonna do somethin’. Be that big-ass Bertha’ fault. Ho wouldn’t stay put.”
Not only were the clothes not to his liking, but ill-fitting to boot. The shirt so tight couple of the top buttons popped off. Fly zipper was half-torn. Marvin cursed under his breath. Could be it was better than the blood-soaked rags he had on before.
“She was great. What a blood-bath. My cock was hard the whole time, still is. What a slaughter. Wished we could have taken a few Polaroids of it.” Biggs took in Marvin’s most recent dilemma. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll scare you up some clothes.” And then he remembered all that gold Slim and Bertha had in their mouths. “Remind me to pull the gold out.”
“You right. Can’t forget the gold.”
CHAPTER 328
Prior to reaching the Foothills Freeway and taking it north, Biggs suggested that Marvin get in the back.
“Make sure the stiffs are dead. I thought I heard something.”
Marvin got out of his seat. Moved toward the mounds in the back.
“Make sure them stiff’ be dead. What else can them stiff’ be, but dead?”
Marvin pressed his ear down against the blankets that covered the bodies inside the laundry bags. Strained to hear whatever it was he was supposed to hear, and couldn’t. He lifted his head. “Meat Wagon be loud, Cecil. I don’t hear nothin’.”
“Stay back there. Keep your head down. Turn the other way.”
“How come, Dawg?”
“I want you to turn away from the windshield. Do it.”
Marvin did as told.
“Got to question everything I tell you? Just do it, that’s all. I want you back there with the stiffs. Got it?”
“Ain’t I back here?”
“Stay put until I tell you different.”
“Ain’t got to tell me twiced.”
CHAPTER 329
Biggs took his time, was careful not to commit any traffic blunders, and thirty-five minutes later they were pulling up to the Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in the Altadena Foothills. The main gate stayed locked at night and Biggs decided to pause there for a bit. There was a funeral home combo chapel with the groundskeeper’s quarters in back of it about eighty feet to the right of them inside the cemetery. Sometimes Tulio Pedroza, the dope toking, beer-guzzling aging hippie who ran the place, stayed up late at night in his living quarters, rolling joints and entertaining call girls, and vice versa.
There were no lights on, that Biggs could tell. Pedroza was probably sleeping off a bender.
This was the “legit” section of the great and vast cemetery where Joe Citizen was laid to rest, buried; where the amenities were not spared; lavish burials took place and mourners showed, a priest or two. Graves were immaculately prepared; grounds had stone crosses and tombs, conscientiously trimmed brambles and trees, rose gardens, all of it.
If you were into robbing the dead this was where you came to pick up the occasional diamond-studded ring or wristwatch, gold wedding bands, necklaces and bracelets—if Tulio and his preying crew of miscreants didn’t get to them first.
This was the place where Biggs’s own ten-thousand-dollar Rolex came from. Tulio Pedroza had sold it to him at a hard-to-beat price of fifteen hundred.
Biggs shifted into gear. Drove along the left side of the cemetery for an entire city block to another entrance, sans gate. Drove onto the gravel road that took them into the potter’s field section where nameless transients were dumped, OD cases without ID whom the coroner’s people dropped off and were buried without a single mourner in attendance, where alkies like his stepfather J.J. and street hookers like his mother were dropped, one on
top of the other, in single graves that were but three feet deep in some cases; where the grass was cut at irregular intervals, if at all, and the weeds grew; where graves did not have fresh flowers or wreaths on them—or hardly a marker.
There were crosses and tombstones, but they were rare. This is where it ended for you if you were a nobody. Neglected while alive, further neglected and possibly shat on after death—as bums were known to show as a way of hiding out from the heat and authorities and to zone out during the day or even at night in relative tranquility (and took a dump now and then), usually back there, way in back, against the chain-link fence among the trees and undergrowth.
Not much grave robbing went on here, in that there wasn’t much to steal, other than a set of dentures—if you were lucky and they were in moderately usable condition. Maybe, if you were extremely fortunate, a piece of jewelry that was worth something, or you unearthed a cadaver to take to one of many medical centers throughout California and Arizona eager to pay hard cash for them.
CHAPTER 330
Biggs steered the cargo van deep into the neglected cemetery and told Marvin to move back up. Dug into a box of latex gloves and handed a pair to Marvin. Got into a pair himself. Reminded him to grab a gas mask.
“Wished we had one of them zip-up green suit’.”
“Right now, we don’t. I’ll have to pick some up.”
“Hate this place.”
Marvin was having a real tough time sliding the gauze-wrapped hand into the latex glove. Got the other hand into the glove easily enough. Was looking through the windshield at the graves and markers and no markers and the heavy fog that had drifted down from the surrounding hills and reservoir.
“What’s the matter?”
“Don’t nothing be the matter. Just make’ me nervous to come here wiff all the graves all around; like bein’ trapped by graves and stiffs. Every place you look: dead peep’ sayin’: ‘What chu want? Why you come here at night like this?’ I don’t be likin’ it. There always be some animal’ killin’ each other; cat’ fightin’ an’ shit.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s the living you’ve got to watch out for, the dead can’t hurt you. Besides, you’ll be in one of them graves yourself one of these days, just another stiff. We both will. Couple of cadavers—that the world never gave two turds about . . . unless our stats go up, way up, and our quality of torture continues to improve.”
“That be your department, Lusty: Quality of Torture. I be more interested in Quality of Trim.”
“Trim ends up out here, no matter how young or good looking they might be now.”
“I don’t be gettin’ this talk ’bout bein’ dead. Ain’t gonna be for a long time, me.”
“Just another stiff in a cracker box six feet under, just another grave—or, if you prefer, a fistful of ash in a cheap urn. In fact, most of these poor bastards and bitches aren’t even given the courtesy of being buried that far down. You can go three, four feet—and there you are, scraping against some cut-rate cardboard coffin with a wood frame. Sometimes they double them up, you know? Double-deckers. Used to triple-deck them, and the coffin on the bottom would collapse from the weight.”
“Fuck all that.”
Marvin fought off chills on this relatively warm So. Cal. night.
“The bodies under the house don’t seem to bother you. We come here, the rare times we do—and you get spooked.”
“How you know the bodies we got buried under the cribby don’t bother me? Could be they do.”
“I like having some of them around, nearby. For the occasional visit. Not to mention the only way to possess someone fully and completely.”
“Got to be boo-shittin’ me, man. How you gonna possess a ho when they dead? They don’t be givin’ you nothin’ back when they dead, a stiff.”
“You don’t understand. I’m wasting my time, as usual.”
“I get it, me. Beatin’ some infidel’ ass when they got it comin’ an’ puttin’ the mofo down be one thing. To think about me bein’ here buried wiff these mothafuckahs what ain’t got nobody to put no flower’ or nothin’ on they grave make me get tight inside, man; make my gut’ real tight that way. I don’t be likin’ it. Never did go for any of that rippin’ off graves an’ shit, neither. Takin’ from the dead; dumpin’ stiffs here.”
“I know what you mean. Maybe a badass doppelganger will leap out from behind a bush just to fuck with us.”
“Dope-gang? Here?”
“Doppelganger. As in ghost.”
“I be for gettin’ it over wiff. Not that I believe any of that shit about ghost and evil spirit’. I ain’t one of them dumb-ass nigga’ like they got in them Abbott and Costello flick’. You know the one? Fuck all that runnin’ around bein’ scared wiff them big eyes open wide ’cause the stupid nigga seen a ghost and he ready to drop a load in his drawers.”
Biggs let him go on. Didn’t have a clue what he was rambling about.
“Graveyard just gimme the mothafuckin’ creep’. Be like voodoo. Same shit. Who be needin’ it? I don’t be needin’ it. You the one yo mama took to graveyard’ all the time when you was a kid to see dead peep’ put in the dirt, while she was blowin’ some old dude behind a bush. You the one had you that kind of life. My mama was a ho, no lie—she never took me to no graveyard so she could make bank—she did it right there in the motel room, while I be hidin’ under the bed. Said: You can’t use the crapper. What if the trick gotta use the crapper. Get under the bed, Marvin. At least she didn’t go to no graveyard for it.”
“Could be why graveyards don’t faze me the way they do others. Night or day. We all end up with the worms. Dead. Forgotten. Forever. Unless you leave a legacy. To be remembered by.”
“Yo. You workin’ on that, ain’t you? What this be about.”
“The idea is to live while you’re alive, live to the fullest—and if you do it right the rest will take care of itself.”
“Should jus’ bury the stiff’ and git on out.”
CHAPTER 331
Fog was thick and foreboding. Biggs had kept the van’s headlights off, paused periodically to shine his Maglite in this direction or that, at what he thought might have been a transient or two either sleeping atop a grave, or else way back against the trees, but detected nothing. One could never be too cautious. There wouldn’t be any young punks and their nympho chicks out here during the week. They usually, when they did, came out on weekends and did so at the other, better tended part of the cemetery. No, only the homeless, bums, alkies and their ugly wenches showed here from time to time; even so, it was rare for them. Rollers cruised the surrounding streets and chased them off when they were spotted.
Biggs drove deeper into the boneyard in search of the grave. The last time they were here they had randomly selected one and gone down about three feet, as was their method, had covered the hole over with an old sheet of plywood, sprinkled a layer of leaves and dirt over the plywood as part of the camouflage process, and spread the rest of it around so that it would not be detected by the caretaker and his druggie crew.
Digging a hole days, sometimes weeks in advance was a way of saving time the nights they trolled for victims and the dumping of a body was called for that allowed them to make it back home before daybreak, while the neighbors, most of them anyway, slept. No doubt there were Harold and Fay Crust to stay alert for, Lloyd Dicker, Mr. Limp Pecker himself, simply because he walked with a cane; and, of course, the main pain-in-the-ass and the semi pain-in-the-ass: respectively, Petunia and Marty.
They were off the gravel road and driving over ancient graves with flat markers, if they even had them, unattended shrubbery and foot-high weeds in some places. Soda and beer cans and whiskey and wine bottles got crushed as steel-belted tires rolled over them.
“I don’t see it. Can’t tell shit out here when the fog be like this.”
Biggs eventually stopped the van. Got out with his Maglite and looked around from where he stood. Noticed used prophylactics and tampons under his
feet, used spikes—left there by the occasional smack addict who ventured out this way. Quite possibly some of Pedroza’s gravediggers.
More beer cans, wine bottles.
Biggs shone the light in front, then in back of him. Could not detect a single sign that any humans were here this night, or living thing, for that matter, other than the usual coyotes yowling in the distance, the occasional screech owl in the trees. You also had the battling cats and noisy crickets adding to the general atmosphere that made it difficult to determine if other humans were, in fact, out here with them.
Had they been followed? The intermittent buzzing in his ears had made it impossible to make out during the drive out. You had that, the police scanner, and general traffic hum, until they had left the freeway and other roads routinely traveled, and then it had got fairly quiet, and now they were here.
Biggs moved a few steps. Aimed the light down on the ground, approximately ten feet in front of where he stood.
There it was: a corner of the plywood sheet visible from under the damp ground left this way by the rains.
He unlocked the Party Wagon’s back door. Opened it. Unlocked the oblong metal box where he kept digging tools and weapons in. Lifted a 12-gauge shotgun, one of the shovels. Handed the shovel to Marvin. Dug a pickaxe out and laid it beside the box.
“Get with it, Free Ride.”
Marvin scooted out of the van.
“Over there.”
Biggs locked the metal box back up.
“I don’t see it, me.”
Marvin remained nervous and jittery.
“Don’t sweat the dead. Never sweat the dead. The dead are your friends. It’s the living who will always fuck you over.”
