Blood Money

by Doug Richardson

  He jacked a spare magazine into the pistol, rounded the grill of the Freightliner and saw her. Prostrate on the ground like a wounded animal already struggling to right herself. Her weapon impotent and out of reach.

  The first bullet had struck Gonzo center mass. Dead in her chest. And though the impact was easily absorbed by the Kevlar vest, she still felt as if she’d been kicked by a mule.

  She hadn’t a clue why she’d lost her grip on the gun. It flipped away from her like a fish. Her instinct was to chase it and snatch it back into her hand on the first bounce. Only her nerves were lying to her brain. Nowhere in her conscious self did she know the second bullet had cut right through her elbow. The joint shattered in an instant, the muscles contracting and releasing at practically the speed of light, involuntarily tossing the pistol away.

  Gonzo had spun, catching the third slug in the crease between her butt cheek and her hamstring. It cut her wheels and sent her crashing face first to the pavement. In the scattered moments after, she wondered if it was blood she tasted in her mouth or was the flavor residual road oil?

  You’re not dead, Gonzo. So fuckin’ move!

  However only one leg wanted to function. And she still couldn’t manage anything with her right arm. Useless. As if she’d left it attached to the steering wheel of the Volvo.

  Get up and get your gun!

  Gonzo heard footsteps. Heavy shoes slapping at the pavement, closing with every quickened stride. She felt Lucky sliding down to her side.

  “Where you hit?”

  “I dunno,” said Gonzo. If she’d had time to think, she might’ve been able to assess her wounds. “Think everywhere.”

  Lucky positioned himself on the ground between the rig and Gonzo, reloaded .45 outstretched, sweeping all eighteen wheels of the Freightliner.

  “Did you get him?” She twisted on her left hip, the pain reaching every nerve ending. She slumped.

  “Unknown,” said Lucky. “Can you move?”

  “If I could do you think I’d be like this?”

  “Right.”

  Lucky slid behind her without ever letting the barrel of his pistol leave the big rig.

  “Can you sit up?” asked Lucky.

  Gonzo didn’t answer as much as command herself to roll the opposite way and utilize every strand of her abdominals to bend at the waist. It was then she got her first look at her right elbow and her dangling forearm.

  “Fuck. My arm.”

  Lucky hoisted her without warning, grappling her around her chest until he’d begun to drag her backwards. Away from the semi. Inching toward the drainage ditch just beyond the road’s shoulder. All the while, his pistol still stretched out defensively. Prepared to unleash hell.

  “Where the hell is he?” breathed Gonzo.

  A shadow crossed. So quickly it was like a camera shutter flipping open and closed. A mechanical eye blink. The figure passed in front of the Volvo headlights, momentarily paralyzing both Lucky and Gonzo.

  The Volvo’s engine suddenly roared. The timing belt’s slippage made a piercing sound that cut through the air. The wagon’s almost bald tires chirped against the pavement in a sudden surge forward on a doubtless path. The beams bucked at the first acceleration, then zeroed in on the struggling duo.

  Compelled by instinct, Gonzo planted her good leg into the ground and tried to stand, only to have Lucky spin her away from the surging Volvo. Gonzo hit the pavement again, this time six feet closer to the ditch, but hardly clear of the Volvo’s closing bumper.

  Then she heard the scream.

  The sound began low in Lucky’s diaphragm. A guttural foulness that built into a banshee howl. He charged the rushing station wagon, the Colt pistol as his leading edge, spitting heavy lead.

  The left headlight sparked and died, turning the oncoming wagon into a three-thousand-pound one-eyed beast. Three more bullets slapped the windshield. Cracks in the automotive glass spidered all the way to the rubber molding.

  As for Lucky, he was beyond thinking. He had a picture of Beemer in his mind. Despite the headlight’s glare, the Kern detective etched himself an image of the nemesis behind the wheel of the oncoming Volvo. A grinning joker, hell-bent on painting chaos wherever he went.

  The Volvo closed. Impact was imminent. But Lucky wasn’t going to die on the grill of a late model station wagon. He leapt forward, laid himself out horizontally and met the rushing vehicle at the damaged windshield. The weakened glass gave way, inverted under the combined Gs of his weight and the vehicle’s speed, and collapsed inward in a crush of glass, metal and tangled bodies.

  Gonzo used her shoulder to throw herself left, avoiding the Volvo by mere inches. The station wagon blew past her in a rush of wind and exhaust, pitching over the shoulder and eventually coming to rest after digging through twenty feet of soft ditch.

  The Volvo’s horn sounded, stuck on a single obnoxious note.

  Your gun, Gonzo. Get to your gun.

  The adrenalin feeding Gonzo’s muscles lifted her onto her one strong leg. She was able to skip-limp without falling over to her pistol, which still lay on the pavement, hammer cocked, safety engaged. She ignored her dangling forearm, gripped the gun with her left hand, then returned her attention to the finished Volvo that lay steaming in the ditch.

  “LUCKY!” she shouted. “I’M COMIN’ AWRIGHT?”

  She held the pistol forward, nearly sideways for balance, and continued to step-then-shuffle closer—then closer again—to the ditched car.

  “YOU HEAR ME, LUCK? HANG ON!”

  Gonzo approached from the passenger’s side. The taillights, stuck in full-braking flare, brightly ignited her anguished face. Her back teeth were set, molar to molar. On full lock-jawed grind. She leaned her shoulder against the side panels for balance and bounced herself down to the rear door latch. The door popped open easily and downhill gravity did the rest. The interior dome light glowed dull and yellow.

  Muzzle first, Gonzo expected to see a bloody mess. Instead, she found windshield bits, a mangle of interior plastics, and Lucky.

  “Jesus…” she said, suddenly hacking up the spit caught in her throat.

  The man, who only hours ago had shared both her bed and sweat was twisted around between the front and rear seats. Lucky’s clothes were either roughed up or shredded by the glass. His limbs appeared askew, no longer ergonomically intact. His exposed skin was scored and bleeding. Gonzo read his breathing. Short and labored, hampered by Lord knows how many broken ribs.

  As a traffic cop she’d seen this enough times. Yet it was what she couldn’t see that usually killed the accident victims. Internal bleeding.

  “Lucky…”

  One of the man’s eyes cracked open amidst his badly lacerated face. His lips barely moved.

  “Don’t let him…” whispered Lucky.

  Don’t let him get away.

  That’s when it registered to Gonzo that the driver’s seat was empty and that damned squeaky door was wide open.

  Gonzo pushed herself out of the vehicle, spun around the door and fell headlong into the dry ditch. Her forehead struck sand. But her left hand never let go of her 9mm. She threw her shoulder forward, placed the gun where she could retrieve it, and effectively performed a single one-armed pushup until she could find a purchase. Then she rose, pulling herself up over the Volvo’s right fender.

  That’s when she saw him.

  Downriver. Stumbling along the rocky bank was the distant figure of the bad man, unsteady, yet progressing in full retreat. The lone headlight of the ditched Volvo painted him in a flat and distant hue.

  How far away, Lyd? Seventy-five yards? A hundred?

  “An’ getting further every second,” she answered herself with a heavy exhale.

  She lifted the pistol, resting it on the angled hood and tried to focus through the steam that misted from the ruptured radiator.

  The right-handed cop had to switch off the safety with her teeth. The lever clicked and left her with the bitter taste of gunmetal and bloo
d.

  Do it. Do it now.

  Gonzo sighted the weapon, closing her left eye and sticking her chin into her left shoulder. The dimming figure bobbed in her line of sight as he climbed up and down the heavy boulders at the edge of the rushing spill-off.

  She remembered her very first academy shooting lesson. She let the voice of the range instructor whisper to her inner ear.

  Inhale. Exhale. Hold. Squeeze.

  Bam! The pistol bucked in her hand. The muzzle flared with a white hot powder burn against the blackness and disappeared in time for Gonzo to see the nameless bad man twitch and pitch sideways into the rushing water. The body slapped the water and was carried away in less than a heartbeat. Gone.

  I got him.

  “I GOT HIM!” shouted Gonzo, echoing her inner voice. “YOU HEAR ME LUCKY? I GOT HIM!”

  “LUCKY? LUCKY!!!!!!”

  38

  The memorial service for Pepper Ellis was scheduled for a cooler Saturday afternoon at Bel-Air Presbyterian. Only the weathermen were wrong. The high pressure bubble that had settled over Southern California, inviting more than a week of fire-breathing temperatures, had promised to dissolve. But overnight, it had returned to muscular form, shocking the experts and placing pressure, once again, on the already distressed power grid.

  The Mulholland Drive church, perched on five acres of prime real estate, was known as much for its multi-million dollar views of the over-baked San Fernando Valley as it was as the favorite Sunday respite for former president Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy. The house of worship with a capacity of sixteen hundred was overstuffed with mourners, well-wishers, and deal makers who were paganly using the sad event to make their presence known. It appeared that practically overnight the precocious seventeen-year-old Pepper had transformed from a kiddie-cable up-and-comer to nearly a household name.

  To make the event feel even more crowded, news networks, looking to maximize viewership, sent anchors and news trucks to cover the memorial.

  “Nothing like a little blonde TV star as icing on the cake to a terrorist story,” confided Lilly Zoller to her date, Graham McDonald, the assistant U.S. Attorney pal-slash-booty-buddy. Luckily for McDonald, the Attorney General had sent a number of his best lawyers to Los Angeles to ride close herd on the continuing terror investigations.

  Lilly had respectfully accepted Conrad Ellis’ invitation to attend his daughter’s memorial. She’d chosen to sit in a back pew, on the aisle, just in case she needed a quick escape. For days her cell phone had been buzzing with interview requests fielded by her new agent.

  “Before me,” whispered Graham, “you didn’t know who Pepper Ellis was.”

  “Don’t sound so smug. It’s not attractive.”

  Lilly surveyed the room. Never had she seen so many good-looking people dressed in designer black. All members of the Hollywood club. Showbiz insiders. With Conrad Ellis as an ally, who knows? Lilly might get beyond the invited guest stage and gain full membership.

  The altar was adorned with large high-resolution photos mounted on easels set amongst impressive sprays of white roses. Each image appeared to have been chosen by the PR folks hired by the network’s executives. Pepper Ellis would be remembered more as how she had lived as an actress and less than as a daughter.

  Conrad ambled before the front pews, greeting the elite mourners with a gloved hand.

  “I hear he’s a germaphobe,” whispered Graham.

  So what if he is? thought Lilly. The man could wear a body condom for all she cared. After all, he was the grieving father and could do exactly as he pleased.

  “You are gonna introduce me,” Graham stated.

  “I haven’t even met him yet,” said Lilly. “At least not in person.”

  “So it’s only been phone sex so far?”

  Graham’s joke didn’t land well with Lilly, who flicked him a distasteful sneer.

  “Shame on you. It’s a memorial—”

  “Okay. My bad,” said Graham without even trying to sound remorseful. “Just wanna be able to tell my daughter I met Pepper’s dad.”

  A cell phone whistled. Lilly instantly recognized the sound as her own ring tone, embarrassed that she’d forgotten to set it on vibrate. She dug into her voluminous black Marc Jacobs bag and retrieved the offending device.

  “Fuck me,” said Lilly, rereading the memo in hopes that she’d gotten it wrong the first time.

  “You gonna share?” whispered Graham.

  “Deputy A.G. just touched down at LAX. Wants to meet up in Glendora.” Lilly glanced up from her phone. “Where the hell’s Glendora?”

  “Thought you were from here.”

  “Just cuz somebody’s from Disneyland doesn’t mean they can pinpoint every pimple on Goofy’s ass.”

  The text on Lilly’s phone revealed an inconvenient meeting time.

  “Jesus. I’m gonna have to go,” said Lilly.

  “Swell,” said Graham, clearly and coldly disappointed. “So I’m not gonna meet Pepper’s dad.”

  “Stick around for all I care,” spat Lilly. “Maybe you can get an autograph.”

  * * * *

  Rey never had a chance to thank the police officer who’d rescued him from his pool. The most he ever learned was that a lone cop, following Beemer’s trail of mayhem through the house and into the backyard, had mistakenly flipped on the colored pool and landscape lights. Upon sighting Rey lying motionless at the bottom of the shallow end, the former lifeguard had jumped in and begun lifesaving measures. The first thing Rey recalled was waking up coughing. As if recovering from a nightmare only to find out the lung he was gagging up was his own waterlogged organ. He laid sideways on the stone hardscape, convulsing as he involuntarily expelled those last deadly drops of chlorinated water. He recalled seeing a thinnish black man in a dripping, navy blue uniform, pointing around the backyard as if directing traffic. But Rey never saw his face nor got his name or badge number.

  Chalk that up to another regret.

  After an ambulance ride and a brief stint in the emergency room, Rey was released with a prescription for an albuterol inhaler and a follow-up appointment with his family physician.

  When he called Mayako to ask her for a ride home from the hospital, his query had gone straight through to voicemail—her habit when she didn’t want to talk to him. So he called a cab with plans to pay the driver once he’d returned to his Granada Hills home. But upon arrival he found his suburban refuge had been taped off as a federal crime scene. A faceless fed paid the fare and ordered up a car to take Rey to a hotel near the Bob Hope Airport. Rey remained there under twenty-four hour guard for six days and nights in a suite without a working telephone. He never left his room. Not a soul came to visit him. Not Mayako. Not his brother, Heber. Still, he questioned no authority, never asked to retain a lawyer, and appeared content to rack up a huge room service and in-room-movie bill that the government obligingly paid.

  All the while, Rey waited for somebody—anybody at all—to appear at the door with some kind of recording device. The government would clearly need a statement from him. A from beginning to end recitation of events from Rey’s point of view. After all, he was a significant cog in the news event of the year. Domestic terrorism. America had been attacked from within. For God’s sake, it was still not just the lead story in every news broadcast, but a bloody mystery all over the globe.

  Who was Greg Beem? And why did he do it?

  As far as the outside world was concerned, Greg had blown himself to kingdom come in Long Beach. A suicide bomber of domestic proportion. Yet Rey knew different. The man called Greg Beem had paid a visit to the pool man a mere thirteen hours after the catastrophic event in Long Beach. He’d killed seven more in Granada Hills, tried for an eighth with Rey Palomino, then escaped over the fence into the neighbor’s yard.

  Rey mentally prepared for his interrogation by the FBI.

  Did you know for certain the man who tried to drown you was Greg Beem?

  But he couldn't identify hi
s attacker for certain. It had been dark. A night full of waiting followed by an oh-so-sudden case of shock and awe.

  Then how do you know your attacker was Greg Beem?

  “Who else could it have been?” Beemer would say aloud to himself.

  On the seventh day, a different, yet equally faceless fed informed Rey that it was safe for him to return to his Granada Hills home. He was given a ride, dropped off on the residential street that fronted his house, and bid goodbye.

  The news vehicles were all gone, including the van that had been turned into a deadly projectile. What had once been a welcoming front entry was now a gaping torpedo hole. The face of the injury was masked with heavy ply plastic sheeting stapled haphazardly into place. Had it rained once, disaster would have been imminent. The sheeting would have acted as a funnel, flooding his home and causing untold damage. Rey gave thanks for the dry weather that had come with the unrelenting heat.

  The spare key to the deadbolt on the laundry room door was hidden inside a faux river rock, tucked neatly into the real stones lining the gravel walk that stretched along the west side of the house. Rey entered his home, fully expecting it to smell as if the air molecules hadn’t moved in a week. Instead, he discovered the central air was blowing full tilt. The pleasant surprise was followed by a brief tightening in his chest. Had the air conditioning been running nonstop for the entire week? He imagined a massive uptick in his electricity usage. The next bill would be huge. Strangely, this led Rey to to his dining room table which, despite the sustained tidal wave of destruction, appeared to have been barely touched. Those neat stacks of accounts payable remained intact, ordered precisely as Rey could best remember them. No blood had been spilled on them. No stray bullets had disturbed a single past due sheet.