Every Day Above Ground

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “He piss on the seat or something?” I said.

  Topknot grinned. “Wadja do, Roddy?” he called.

  Roddy glowered at us through his unswollen eye. Topknot laughed.

  “He won’t tell us,” said Topknot, “but he knows, and Bomba knows, and that’s enough for Roddy to pay the bill.”

  Cyndra had said that the second man who’d tried to grab her in Reseda was blond, and short. The welterweight fit both criteria. Perhaps Roddy had been the scapegoat for their failure to grab Cyndra.

  “Gimme the tour,” I said to the trainer.

  He nodded, maybe glad I hadn’t bolted for the door after the show.

  “I’m Orville,” he said, holding out a broad hand. As we shook, his crooked pinky finger didn’t bend at the knuckle with the others.

  “Zack,” I said, randomly picking the name of one of the staff sergeants from my last platoon. At least I hadn’t reflexively told Orville my name was Wilbur. “You run the place?”

  “Nah. I mean sometimes I help out, when I’m not on the road. When I’m in Seattle, I mostly work with Dickson.” He nodded toward the guy with the blue sleeve tattoos, who leaned lazily against the largest heavy bag, talking to Bomba.

  “A contender?”

  “Gettin’ there,” Orville said, pointing. I belatedly noticed the large fight poster on the wall behind the ring, hyping an event from last year in Mexico City. The blanket-sized print allowed plenty of room for headshots of the main matchups, including a sneering picture of the fighter currently shooting the shit with Bomba. Dickson Hinch, the poster read under his photo.

  “Ranked number eight now, light heavy,” Orville continued. “He’s coming up. You watch.”

  “And Bomba? Is he one of your fighters?”

  Orville’s face twisted in disgust. “Not with that gut. He’s just Dickson’s buddy from the day job.”

  I took that to mean that Hinch worked at Pacific Pearl, too. His face hadn’t been in the photos from Juniper Adair. I’d come in to track down Bomba, and discovered an entire faction of Pacific Pearl employees here at the neighborhood gym. Dickson Hinch and blond Roddy, along with Bomba. I wondered how many others at Sledge City were included. And how many knew that Pacific Pearl ran more than lettuce and carrots across the mountains.

  The gym might simply be a convenient place for the freight company employees to work out. Or the link between them could run the other direction. Pacific Pearl had to find their drivers somewhere. Recruiting muscle out of a nearby MMA gym was an easy leap.

  Orville led me around the wide space of the converted warehouse. The equipment was the same scattering of a dozen makes like Everlast or Reyes or Title you’d find in any gym. A thousand pictures and flyers covered the walls, most from fights long past and fighters who’d never made it big. Duct tape reinforced somewhere between five and ninety percent of all gear.

  Mostly, the smell was the same. Its strength varied with the frequency of cleaning, but it was always the same mix of old sweat and new sweat layered over leather and vinyl and ammonia. The odor should be bad, but rarely was. I’d spent too many hours in gyms not to have positive associations with it, even in a dog pit like Sledge City.

  I kept half an eye on the fighters while Orville talked. Dickson Hinch and Bomba were clearly cocks of this particular walk. The other fighters made way for the pair, even if it meant interrupting their flow as they drilled on combinations.

  Nobody acknowledged Roddy as he came out from the bathroom, his raw face dripping with water. Still a pariah, even after Bomba’s punishment.

  Orville noticed my glance at the walking wounded.

  “Uh,” he said, “you probably didn’t get the best first impression, okay? It’s after hours, kind of, and Bomba and Roddy had a personal beef, I guess. It ain’t acceptable. Where you from?”

  “Georgia. Most recently.” Which was true. I’d been discharged out of Fort Benning six months earlier.

  “Well, great. You want training, the gym’s got some guys who know their way around.”

  “Who’s the owner? I’ll look at the contract.”

  Orville shrugged. “He’s signing some guy up in Quebec, I think. Fight promotion. Makes him go where the work is, just like me. Nobody cares about paperwork.”

  I didn’t want to press Orville for more. It might make the conversation too memorable. Sledge City was enemy territory; I’d sensed that the instant I’d crossed the threshold.

  But I was very curious about the gym’s absent owner. If Claudette Simms really did have a silent partner like I suspected, that made two businesses on the same road with unseen bosses.

  Orville read my hesitation for reluctance.

  “First workout’s free. And you should see the girls who come in from downtown. Come by whenever.”

  “Take you up on that,” I said.

  Orville and I shook hands again. Hinch and Bomba were still close in conversation, their words lost in the thuds of fists and shins on heavy bags from the other fighters. Bomba cast me another malignant look. Maybe just heavyweight posturing, staring down a potential rival. Or maybe something more.

  Roddy sullenly tossed his gloves and wraps into a backpack. I went outside to wait.

  Roddy was easy to tail. He kept his eyes on the rain-wet pavement ten feet in front of him, as his legs trudged a path that didn’t require thinking. Every hundred yards he’d hock a gob of equal parts spit and blood onto the sidewalk.

  We went three blocks west and three more north. Just when I thought that the bruised welterweight was headed for the nearest light rail station, he turned and disappeared into the red-lit doorway of a tavern. The crimson light came from an old-fashioned glass lamp that hung over the entrance.

  So much for following Roddy home right away. I wanted to find out where he lived, maybe toss the place later and confirm whether he’d been in Reseda with Bomba, driving the kidnap van. And see if I could find anything that would tell me the gym owner’s name, or at least give me a lead on the man.

  I could wait outside the bar and continue to tail Roddy when he came out.

  Or I could see if he needed a drinking buddy after his tough night.

  The tavern had a train motif, maybe in honor of the nearby tracks. Railroad crossing signs and faux station markers for places like Duluth and Kansas City adorned the walls. Peak hour, most of the tables occupied by small knots of working men or couples getting a start on the night’s drinking.

  Roddy stood at the counter. Now that the sweat from his fight had dried, his blond locks had curled into a mass of ringlets that looked oddly babyish on his short blocky frame. He shuffled his feet and tried to catch the eye of the bartender.

  On an open table by the door was a dead pint, dregs of IPA at the bottom. I grabbed it and took it to the counter like I was looking for my next round.

  “Hey,” I said to Roddy. “You were at the gym.”

  He blinked at me. His left eye wasn’t completely closed, but I’m sure focusing took extra effort.

  “Yeah,” he said, not sounding too certain.

  “You gave that big guy a bad time, man,” I said.

  His puffed brow tightened. “You giving me shit? ’Cause I’ll show you right here, motherfucker.”

  Roddy was giving up at least fifty pounds to me and he’d already had his bell rung once tonight. Wounded pride, maybe stirred into a base of crazy.

  “I mean it,” I said. “Guy that size, I thought sure he’d mash you. But you hurt him some.”

  He grunted. “Popped his leg. The shithead hates that, he’s slow.”

  “What do you drink?” I said. The approaching bartender glanced at Roddy’s purpling face, but kept his thoughts to himself.

  “Huh. Red Ale,” Roddy said.

  I pointed at my empty pint. “Another for me. And give us two shots of Jack. Hey.” I nudged Roddy on the shoulder. “Grab that table, man. I got this round.”

  He scowled but slouched off to the table I had nodded to. The bartender pou
red the shots. While he waited for the pints to settle, I slipped two crushed tablets of trazodone into one of the shot glasses and swirled it.

  If I had any qualms about pouring alcohol and prescription sleep drugs into a guy who might be flirting with a concussion, the thought of Cyndra running from these Sledge City assholes took that hesitation and jammed it down a garbage disposal.

  I joined Roddy at the table. Set the pints down and handed him the shot glass.

  “Here’s to violence,” I said as we tossed them back.

  An hour later, I dumped Roddy’s stumbling form into a cracked plastic chair outside his ground-floor apartment door, two miles from the bar. He’d made the journey in the passenger seat of my truck, not that he was likely to remember it. I sidestepped a soup can filled with cigarette butts and chew spit and unlocked his door.

  No one inside. Either he lived alone or his roomies were out.

  “Hey,” I said, but he was already zoned. There was a Chevy key fob on the ring I’d lifted from his pocket, its half-broken plastic reinforced with black electrical tape. We’d passed a Chevy minivan coming up the block. I turned to the street and pressed the button.

  A beep sounded, but not from up the street. It came from the alleyway on the closer side of the apartment block. I left Roddy slumped where he was and rounded the corner.

  Halfway up the alley, a panel van sat, leaving a scant foot of space on either side of each wall. No license plate on the rear bumper. I opened the back door and climbed in.

  Someone had removed the third row of seats and replaced it with a large thick plastic bin, the kind used for storing seat cushions and kids’ toys on outdoor patios. The beige bin took up the entire width of the back. I popped the plastic latches. The bin was empty. It looked brand-new. Jammed between the bin’s plastic side and the interior wall of the van was a roll of duct tape, a few bottles of water, and a bag of t-shirt rags. They might as well have put it all in a sack labeled Kidnap Kit.

  No need to search Roddy’s home to verify that he was one of Cyndra’s would-be kidnappers. I wished that Bomba had knocked out a few more of the fucker’s teeth before the fight was over.

  Back at the apartment, I yanked the unconscious welterweight more or less vertical and walked him inside. My place off Broadway wasn’t much fancier, but at least every surface in my home didn’t look coated in grease. I let Roddy go and he fell facedown onto his frayed bedsheets. He was snoring in less than a minute.

  I wanted to jam Roddy into his plastic cage and drive the kidnap van into the Sound. But during our hour at the tavern, I’d played the starry-eyed MMA fan and got Roddy mumbling about Sledge City’s stable of pro fighters. He admitted, grimacing, that Dickson Hinch was king shit around the gym, a real badass. Roddy’s dance partner Bomba had a few serious bouts on his record. But more recently, Bomba was edging into promotion. Right-hand man to the chief himself, Sledge City’s owner and Hinch’s manager.

  “Oh yeah,” I had said, playing up the whiskey shots. “Orville tol’ me about him. What’s his name?”

  Roddy rocked his stoned head from side to side. The traz was kicking in. “Fekkete. Fuck it, Fekkete. Thas what I say.”

  “You met him?”

  “Hired me himself. Ta-mas.” His lip had curled like he was about to spit another gob on the table. “Not fucking Tom for him. No way. Tamas.”

  “Hired you at the gym?”

  The head rocking turned into a loose shake. It wouldn’t be long before his skull bounced on the table. “For drivin’. Hires me, then he goes out of town, fuckin’ weeks. I don’t hear a damn thing. Then suddenly he’s got us running around fucking everywhere. Believe that shit?”

  I did. I tapped his glass, and he obediently drank. “Running where?”

  Roddy’s eyes blinked. Maybe remembering that he shouldn’t be talking about that with strangers. Or trying to recall if he was talking at all.

  “Don’ matter. Suddenly it’s hurry up, ’cause now he’s coming back like we’ve been pissing ourselves waitin’. Yeah?”

  I believed that, too. Enough that I would let Roddy keep the ability to walk. At least until he could arrange an introduction for me with boss man Tamas Fekkete.

  Fifteen

  The reporter Calvin Lorenzo was either nocturnal or a very early riser. He had sent me a reply at four in the morning. It simply said Call me today with a phone number attached.

  He picked up on the second ring. “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Lorenzo? I’m calling about Gar Slattery.”

  “Right, right. Hang on.” I heard a sharp clunk and then my phone beeped. Lorenzo was changing the call to a video chat. I put my finger over the phone’s lens and pressed Accept.

  Lorenzo appeared on the screen. Too close and overexposed to the lens, so that the deep lines of his face stood out like a rough sketch—gloomy, elderly, eyes squinting through reading glasses and lips pursed from decades of sucking on either cigarettes or lemons. Then he leaned back and the face became a real face, but my first impression stuck.

  “Can you see me?” he said, the speaker adding to his natural rasp. “Nothing on my end. Say somethin’.”

  “My camera’s broken,” I said.

  “Yep. And you didn’t mention your name, either. That broken, too?”

  “Zack.”

  “Okay, Zack.” He shrugged, like he was used to people playing games with him. “I might have to ask you to repeat what you say if I can’t see your lips move. My hearing isn’t worth a damn. What’s your interest in Gareth Slattery?”

  I decided to serve Lorenzo a thin slice of the truth. “A friend of mine just got out of Lancaster. He knew Gar Slattery inside. Slattery’s due to be released soon. If he comes around, I want to know if I can expect trouble.”

  “Huh.” Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Gar’s getting out? I’d half forgotten he was inside. I only retired eight years ago, but you lose touch fast. How much did your friend tell you about that scumbag?”

  “Not enough.”

  “So you tracked me down. That’s diligent.” He waved a hand, as if to say, What the hell. “Your mentioning Gar brought back a whole garbage barge full of memories. If you saw my articles, then you already know the Slatterys made their money moving narcotics, right?”

  “Slatterys?” I said, stressing the plural.

  “Oh yeah. Gareth had a twin brother, Joseph. Gar and Joe Slattery. L.A.’s answer to the Krays. You know who they were? Never mind.” Before I even started to answer. “Gar and Joe and their kid sister April took over the West Coast pipeline on heroin, back about twenty-five years or so. They weren’t importers, you understand. They were transport. From the border, all the way up to Canada. Only white guys to control that since Mickey Cohen. Don’t suppose you know who he was either.”

  I knew. Cohen had served time on McNeil Island. So had my grandfather, decades later.

  “So they were smugglers,” I said. I had to repeat it before Lorenzo heard me right.

  “Smugglers, enforcers. Gar and Joe were scary as shit. That’s not secondhand color. I saw Gar myself once, when I was working the court rotation. He was being released on bail from one of his abundant charges, and I swear his reputation alone parted the crowd like water for Moses. He had that feel. Evil.”

  “Mr. Lorenzo—” I started.

  “You might think that’s not objective, not journalism, but I’ll tell you that I knew evil when I saw it. His brother Joe was cut from the same rancid cloth. Joe was the sly one, people said; he and April did all the thinking. Not that it helped them.”

  “What happened?”

  “Joe pissed off somebody or other, and one of their company trucks showed up in Long Beach with a lot of Joe’s blood decorating the dashboard. His body is probably still dressed in chains somewhere at the bottom of the harbor.”

  “They don’t know who killed him?”

  “Who killed him, you said? My money would be on Gar himself. Maybe even April. Volatile mothers, all of the Slattery
s. Gar was probably the worst, but we’re talking about a few degrees on a hot day. He didn’t last long after Joe got his. I think April was the one who kept the boys focused on profits instead of mayhem. Six months after Joe died, maybe less, Gar put four bullets in some mule’s head and the prosecutor made it stick.”

  Something was tickling at me, and I waited for Lorenzo to take a breath. Maybe I’d been wrong about the cigarettes; his lung power seemed fine.

  “Baby sister April,” I said. “She skipped town?”

  “Ye-ah,” Lorenzo said, drawing it out. “Right after Joe. You didn’t get that from reading my stuff.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  I dug up the KING-TV article with the picture of Claudette Simms, saved the image, and sent it to Lorenzo’s email.

  “Is that April Slattery?” I said.

  His expression told me everything I needed. Claudette and April were the same woman.

  “Good God,” he said. “Looky there. Where’d you get this?”

  “If I tell you, are you going to follow up on it?”

  Lorenzo shrugged noncommittally. “I’m retired.”

  Addy had accused me of being evasive. I was getting a taste of that medicine. And I suspected that Lorenzo was wily enough not to need my help in chasing down the source of that P-I photo, now that he had the scent.

  “Give me a week before you start fishing,” I said. “April left Los Angeles twenty years ago. One more week won’t make a difference.”

  “And in return?” Lorenzo said.

  “I’ll tell you where April wound up, and what’s been keeping her busy the last few years. But I need something else.”

  He grunted. “’Course you do.”

  “Gar Slattery’s release date. I don’t want to be surprised.”

  “You do not,” Lorenzo confirmed. “I dunno how much of what you’ve told me is bullshit, Mr. Zack. I don’t really give a hang. That’s one of the many pleasures of being out of the game. But the Slatterys were animals. Cunning, maybe, but still sub-fricking-human. There were whispers about the brothers, after Joe died, when the law was deciding what combination of charges would make the best case against Gar. Bad rumors. Like torturing competitors to death, just for kicks. Both of them beating the living hell out of women. Raping them. I wouldn’t ever want to meet a Slattery outside its cage.”