Halfway House

by Weston Ochse

  “It’s that simple?” Bobby asked, unimpressed.

  “Absolutely. I see it every day, especially in my line of work, which comes with a certain unpleasant stench to those pretending to be Hollywood pure hearts. If I don’t begin the fight with the upper hand, I lose every time. From Hollywood to sex to real estate. It’s all the same. And there are times when that doesn’t even work. You know that Trump came in here and snatched up a hundred acres of prime ocean view real estate to build a golf course? Where do you think he got the idea? Do you think the idea of a golf course in Palos Verdes just appeared fully formed in his toupee-draped head? Fuck no. He thought of it because I began to buy up property by Averill Park in San Pedro with designs to build a course overlooking the Harbor. I’d bought seventeen homes when Trump came in, bought the property on the other side of the hill, then convinced the city council that his plan was good, and my plan was shit. I’d had some of those fuckers in my back pocket for years, only I couldn’t match what Trump could pay. No fucking way.”

  “How does it feel to have shit done unto you?”

  His eyes flashed at Bobby. “Pretty fucking bad. But that’s okay. I have my own plans.”

  “I bet you do.”

  “I think I’ve pissed you off, Bobby Dupree. Do you want to take a swing at me?”

  “I’d do it, but these giants would tear me apart.”

  “They wouldn’t do it if I told them not to.”

  Bobby raised his eyebrows and nodded toward his arms, held fast in T’s hands.

  “Let him go, T. Let’s see what the orphanage taught this little fucking Elvis Impersonator.” Once Bobby was released, he added, “Okay, boy. Let me have it. Give me your best shot.”

  Bobby took a step forward. Shrewsbury blinked, but didn’t move. He held his chin out, grinning through gritted lips. Bobby leaned into the man and whispered a name none too softly: “Alvin P. Verdina.”

  “What who?” Shrewsbury’s face suddenly looked as if it had lost air. His expression went from confusion to fear to anger then back to fear. He took two steps backwards and plopped into his chair. “How?”

  “Who the fuck is Verdina?” Sally asked. “I thought there was gonna be a fight.”

  “There was,” murmured Gabe with a look of newfound respect on his face. “Bobby won.”

  “How the hell do you know that name?” Shrewsbury’s eyes narrowed as he reappraised Bobby, realizing he’d made a serious mistake. “Who are you?”

  “I’m just a little fucking Elvis impersonator. You said so yourself.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The Double Platinum awarded to Elvis Aaron Presley for his 1957 hit Heartbreak Hotel.”

  Shrewsbury licked his lips. “I ain’t got it.”

  “Then we have a problem.”

  “Who’s Alvin Verdina?” Sally persisted.

  “He’s nobody, honey,” Shrewsbury said, waving her off. To Bobby he said, “What’s to keep me from telling my boys to find a deep dark hole to put you in?”

  “Louis Cabellos.”

  “Who?”

  “Tell him, Gabe.”

  Gabe cleared his throat nervously. “He’s talking about Lucy Cabellos, the leader of the 8th Street Angels.”

  Jose whistled low and long, exchanging looks with T.

  “What’s he got to do with it?” Shrewsbury glanced from one to the other.

  “Besides the fact he has my back?” Bobby reached across the table, grabbed the bottle of wine, and filled Shrewsbury’s glass. Downing half of it, Bobby snapped his lips appreciatively. “Besides that he also knows about Verdina and you.”

  Shrewsbury had been staring at the glass the entire time Bobby had it in his hands, watching as Bobby finished the wine then returned it empty to the table. Shrewsbury snatched the glass, stared at it for several heartbeats, then threw it into the night. A moment later it shattered. “What do you really want?”

  “I told you. The Double Platinum—”

  “—awarded to Elvis fucking Aaron fucking Presley for Heartbreak fucking Hotel. Yeah. I heard. But I ain’t got that. So what do you really want?”

  “Nothing. You give me the album and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “How do I know you won’t keep coming back for more? Maybe next time you’ll want money.”

  “Nothing’s for certain in this world. You know you wouldn’t be so worried if you’d never hooked up with Verdina. Why did you guys get together, anyway?”

  “A bunch of us used to get together to play poker.”

  “With little boys?”

  “What’s he talking about?” Sally said, her voice changing pitch as she began to piece the puzzle together.

  Shrewsbury spoke fast and low. “Listen, I didn’t know what that sick fucker was involved in until it was almost too late. He paid me to make a movie for him, only I thought it was going to be legit. Some underground personal stuff with a girl or even a guy, I didn’t fucking care, as long as it was legal. Once I found out what he really wanted, I put the kibosh on the whole project. I never even started rolling.”

  “You’re a regular standup guy.”

  “I was.”

  “Why’d he give you the album?”

  “He owed me. Do you know how much a movie costs to make? Even an underground one can go in the five figures.”

  “I thought you didn’t roll film.”

  “I didn’t.” Shrewsbury shook his head. “But I had expenses and I told him I wasn’t going to eat the cost.”

  “So you took it.”

  “Yeah. So I took it.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Why do you want it so badly? What’s the big deal?”

  “That’s a personal question. Where’s the album?”

  “I lost it in a card game.”

  “Who has it?”

  Shrewsbury sighed as if all the air had been squeezed out of him. He gave Bobby an address in Malibu.

  Chapter 22

  Lucy had gotten the phone call twenty minutes ago. The only words were We have one. He then drove down to the docks in a neighbor’s Maxima. Everyone else was putting out fires or trying to chase down the last remnants of the MS 13 attack, so there were no other cars available. Blockbuster wasn’t responding to any of his calls, which worried Lucy. He and Split had been best friends. There was no telling what the boy would do when he found out what had happened.

  With his dad in the hospital and Split dead, Trujillo had figured Lucy might want to get involved in this interrogation. As a rule, Lucy kept away from this side of the job. He was a leader. He was a money provider. He was not a mechanic. But Trujillo was right. Lucy did want to get involved, if only for a little bit, and if only for his own sanity.

  ILWU officers had heard what had happened to his dad. Several had gone to the hospital, while a virtual platoon had gone to the house to take care of his abuela and his mother, who was returning from her sister’s in Tijuana. Normally they’d send one or two folks with some food and goodwill, but out of respect for Lucy and for his dad’s more than thirty years with the union, they’d shown up in full force. They’d also arranged for Lucy to use the docks, understanding, in the brotherly way of the union, that his gang needed some special privacy to create the proper amount of revenge.

  Lucy rolled down South Harbor, then hung a left onto Signal Street. He followed this past the reefer trucks stacked along the road and waiting to be filled with fish, past the Merchant Marine Terminal, to where the pier was blocked by a fence with a guard shack manned by ILWU security.

  He pulled to a stop, showed his face, and was allowed through by a man he recognized from the union front office. His name was Gerald Bouldin and he was known for his unflinching stoicism in the face of police, especially at the strike they’d had in 2003. Although a small rail of a man, his profile was razor sharp, his eyes close together like a hunter’s. Gerald had been the ILWU representative to the L.A. Times and was able to orchestrate events because of his intelligence
and unwillingness to give information without the benefit of cooperation.

  The gate closed behind Lucy.

  Gerald’s presence promised that Lucy would have privacy for what was about to happen, for what needed to happen. Even if his father lived, Lucy’s emotions were enflamed. He didn’t trust his judgment. His heart ruled him too much right now. But he needed a release. Whether or not the Salvadoran had any real information, the man was going to be an outlet for Lucy’s rage.

  Such was the way of the world.

  Such was his need.

  He followed Signal Street to the end of the pier, past containers, loaders and boxes of used banding materials. Here and there a streetlight lit the road in a solitary, glowing pool. At this time of night, the place was a dead zone.

  At the end the pier made a T. The right pointed north toward the lights of San Pedro. The left pointed to the Queen Mary and Long Beach. Lucy took a left and followed the lights from the cars that had already arrived. By the looks of it, Trujillo was here with six Angels. In the headlights of an Impala and two other cars knelt a thick Hispanic man wrapped in a long length of chain. His face had been split in a dozen places, and gleaming red blood coated the chain and the wife beater beneath. A gash stood out on his head, the pink and brown edges peeled back.

  As the lights of Lucy’s car swept the scene, everyone turned toward him. Within moments he’d parked and was striding toward the group. Trujillo met him halfway. Blood speckled his own wife beater. His gray pants held grass and dirt stains. A handkerchief was wrapped around his left hand, and blood seeped through along the line of knuckles.

  “Tell me.”

  “Cheche Violande. Enrique and Todo caught him trying to torch an empty house over by Weymouth. They knocked the shit out of him and threw him in the trunk.”

  “What happened to his face?”

  “It kept attacking my hand.”

  “How’s your hand?”

  “Better than his face.”

  Enrique and Todo stood to his left in front of their lowered green Bronco. They each wore black pants and wife beaters. Enrique was the taller of the two with a Mohawk he’d worn since he’d played basketball at San Pedro High School. Todo had short red hair and tattoos of snakes running up the sides of his arms and down the back of his neck.

  Gorgi, Jose and Manolo leaned against a silver Chrysler 300, tricked out with chrome and spinners glommed from an Escalade. Gorgi was the fat one of the lot. At three-fifty, he weighed more than the other two put together. Jose was a pretty boy with a pencil-thin mustache above full lips. He wore his hair long and constantly combed it. Manolo was one of Lucy’s oldest friends. They’d played together in his backyard when they were five, racing back and forth like cowboys and Indians on their Big Wheels until they found out they were Mexicans.

  “Mijo. Glad to see you here. What’s up?” He shoulder-hugged Manolo then stepped back.

  “Sorry about your dad, Lucy.” Manolo crossed himself, as did the others, and stared at the ground.

  Lucy nodded and bit his cheeks to hold back the emotion. He turned to Enrique. “Good Job, mijo. I heard you caught him torching a house.”

  Enrique took a step forward, automatically bending at the knees and waist to reduce his height. “Sorry about your dad, Lucy.” He paused a moment to cross himself again before continuing. “This maricona was about to lay waste to that gray house over on Weymouth, the one that the one-armed man used to live in before he got all crazy and started hanging out at the halfway house. We saw him stuffing some cloth into a bottle of gasoline. We didn’t have time to do much, so we ran him over.”

  “You ran him over?”

  “Yep.”

  “He went bloop.” Todo laughed, his head nodding like a window Chihuahua. “We thought we’d wrecked the undercarriage. We just put in new cruising lights, but they were okay.”

  “What about the gasoline?”

  “Broke all over him.”

  “And then?”

  “Enrique beat the fuck out of him. Every time the guy tried to get to his feet, he got a boot in the face. When he finally stopped moving, we threw him in the trunk and called Trujillo.”

  “Who called me?” Lucy finished, glancing at Trujillo who stared back impassively. By Lucy’s account, they’d had the Salvadoran for two hours before he was notified. What had gone on then, he could only guess. Check that. Looking at Trujillo’s handkerchief-covered knuckles explained much of it. “So what do we have planned?”

  “Dunno, boss. It’s your show.”

  Lucy looked up at the cranes hovering above the harbor. The air was heavy with the weight of the ocean. The scent of seaweed, dead fish and gasoline pulled him to the water’s edge. He looked back at the hillside of San Pedro then out at the ocean. Even though they were less than half a mile from one of the houses, the place felt isolated and out of time. As if it only existed because he stood there, and if he were to move, it would disappear in the mists of the ocean. This was a place where anything could be done. That it didn’t exist meant that consequences didn’t exist. He didn’t really believe it, but he was almost there. All his conscience needed was a little push and it would fall into the dark Sargasso of his unreason.

  “Remember what they used to do back in the day with the strike jumpers when they caught them? I’m talking back in the early 1970s when Chucky Freed was the chief ball buster.”

  “You mean the Electric Eel?”

  “Yeah. That’s the one.” He walked around the prisoner, his gaze slipping across the man like his hand would if Lucy dared trust himself to touch. “I was thinking that it would be the perfect reward for this maricona’s good deeds. What do you think?”

  Trujillo waited until Lucy made eye contact before responding. When he did, he spoke slow and low. “I think you should let me take care of this, but I know you won’t. I know why you won’t, too. I can’t say he doesn’t deserve it, but the reason you have people like me for this is to keep your soul clean.”

  “My soul is far from clean.”

  “You’re clean compared to me, Lucy. I was made for things like this. You know what your abuela says, that because I was born in the tunnels beneath the mountain I was hidden from God’s gaze. I am free of grace and hell-promised.”

  Enrique, Todo, Manolo, Gorgi and Jose glanced at each other. This was the most anyone had heard the Angels’ devil speak at any one time, and his choice of subject was making them nervous. Lucy had stopped pacing to regard the man as well.

  “You might be hell-promised, but you are a dear Angel, mijo. Let me do this. It’s time my soul is blackened a bit. It’s time yours is allowed to rest.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “As I ever was.”

  Trujillo nodded once, then spun and began to give orders, sending each of the other bangers on specific tasks. He went to the nearest electrical junction box and traced the wires. He wiped the back of his hand across the dirt encrusting the thick feed wire revealing a red horizontal line. Then he jogged down a hundred feet to a junction main, pried free the lock with a crowbar and pulled the lever. The power went out on the light poles nearest them, but stayed on everywhere else.

  When he came jogging back, Todo arrived with an axe. Trujillo took it and after a pair of practice swings, cut the cable in two where he’d marked it. Gorgi peeled back the hard rubber edges with an eight-inch blade until the thick copper bands were exposed to the air. With the help of Jose, they jerked free a thirty-foot length of cable and dragged it to the metal ladder nearest them.

  Meanwhile, Enrique and Manolo manhandled the gangbanger to the edge of the dock. He tried to struggle but ceased once Manolo reminded him that, with all the chain wrapped around him, he’d sink like a Buick if he slipped from their grasp.

  They unwrapped all the chain except one loop, and with Todo’s help, lowered the Salvadoran down the metal ladder until he was almost in the water. Then they surprised the gangbanger by flipping him one hundred and eighty degrees so his feet pointed
to the sky, his head mere inches from the warm harbor water. After a minute, he was once again wrapped in the length of chain, this time affixed tightly to the metal ladder, his face carved into a reverse pumpkin frown.

  Things were finally ready.

  Lucy approached the ladder, where Trujillo handed him the electric cable. He grabbed it about twelve inches from the end. The heavy hard rubber felt like the body of a python. He nodded and Trujillo waved to Jose stationed at the main junction, who then lifted the lever and brought the cable to life. As the lights atop the poles returned their welcoming light, the cable bucked and straightened and fought him for a moment.

  “We call this the electric eel,” he said to no one in particular. “Back in the day, those scabs who’d cross picket lines to go to work, those lost brothers who decided to fuck the rest of us for an average day’s pay, would be tracked down and punished. Early in the morning, we’d go into their homes and pull them from their beds and bring them here, where they’d be punished.”

  He adjusted his grip on the cable and it spit sparks. “I heard stories.” He stepped to the edge of the pier so he was standing over the Salvadoran. “They were the kind of stories that when you heard them you knew they had to be a lie, but the more you thought about them the more they seemed real until they left you in awe, thankful that you weren’t a dirty fucking scab.” He paused. “Take off his boots and tape his ankles to the ladder.”

  Manolo and Gorgi grabbed the man’s feet, jerked out the laces and tossed the boots in the water. The guy’s eyes became frantic, as if he just now realized that he was really and truly fucked. As the silver duct tape affixed his ankles to the pipe, he began to undulate, throwing his hips as far out as he could and jerking them back. No matter. The chain held him fast. He wasn’t going anywhere unless Lucy wanted him to.