by Dell Sweet
~
The night was beautiful, Billy thought, as he walked along Beechwood Avenue. He knew pretty much everyone he passed. He had been here for a little over six months after making his way up from Mexico when things had gone bad for him there. Technically he was on the run. Warrants out of New York. Somebody had put two and two together and dug up some prints from a crime Billy had been involved with. He had only found out about it because he had happened to be away from the house when the Feds showed up. His neck of the woods had no municipal police, but even if it had they wouldn't have come with shotguns and armor.
He had hid out for three days until the word had trickled down to him that it was him they were looking for to hand over to some federal agents from the U.S. It hadn't taken much to put two and two together. He had managed to get a beat up old Ford pickup truck, and then he filled a fifty five gallon drum full of gasoline that was strapped into the bed of the truck: He set off into the desert.
The rest had been easier. Despite the laws and the changes in the U.S. it was pretty easy to disappear here. He had come with a little money, and that had helped. He had worked a series of meaningless jobs as he worked his way up the west coast. L.A. had looked good and so it had held him; that and he had met Beth.
Beth had been working the streets, but she was out of reach and he knew it. Even so, that didn't stop the fact that he wanted her to be in reach. He had never met a woman like her. So he had stayed. He had seen something in her. Something hard, some will he himself had that was hard to define, but that hardness in her pulled him to her like a magnet. It was that simple.
He had been working for Junior by then, and so he had mentioned Beth to him. He didn't know how the details had worked out, but a few weeks later when he had noticed she had disappeared from the avenue, he had found her working at Junior's Palace.
As he walked he became immune to the world around him. He never heard Jon until he was on him, had spun him around, and dragged him into an alley.
“Hey... Hey! Jon... What the fuck, Jon... Hey!” but it did no good. The first punch nearly shut him down. The second did. The rest he never knew about.
L.A.: 2:00 am.
Beth
The night wore on. The morning came and went and the club shut down for another day. Beth worked at cleaning up the last little area of the bar as two of the dancers finished their drinks and hushed conversations, smiled at her, and walked away. A short conversation with Jon, he had probably made some crude remark; Beth had seen how both of them had instantly stiffened their backs after he spoke. It wasn't just her, Jon was an actual creep. Whatever he had said the two girls chose to ignore it, turning away, making eye contact with Beth, waving as if they had been at the bar talking to her, and when Jon looked back to see who they had been waving at they slipped out the door. Jon made his way over to the bar.
“You scared my honeys away,” he told her.
“I think you can do that all on your own,” Beth told him.
“What's that supposed to mean?” Jon asked.
Beth frowned and shook her head. Sometimes she wondered if Jon even knew what a creep he was. How he made the girls who worked here, her included, feel. “It means that not everyone is always on the same page,” Beth said. She had changed her mind at the last second. She had to work here. Jon was the nephew of the owner. Creep or not he was part of the package.
Jon looked confused.
“Jon, Jon, it means that sometimes you just have to let things happen. Go slow. A girl wants to think it was her own idea to like you,” she told him.
“Yeah... I can see that, but when you need it you need it. Some of these bitches need to be on point.” One finger disappeared into his nose and then he seemed to suddenly remember she was there. “You know, me and you need to hook up. I got ...” One massive hand settled onto his shoulder, and he stopped in mid sentence.
“Disappear, Jon, Jon. I need to talk to Beth right now,” Tommy told him as he sat down on one of the stools.
'We was just talking, uncle Tommy.”
“Right, and now you're done talking... Unless you're not? Am I interrupting you?”
Jon turned beet red. He laughed to hide the embarrassment. “No... No,” he turned and walked away.
Tommy turned to Beth. “I guess you'll have to get used to the kid. He's a pain in the ass, but he's my pain in the ass... Load to bear,” He turned and watched Jon step out the door to the parking lot. “Jon, Jon,” Tommy yelled. Jon poked his head back in the door and looked at his uncle. “Take a good look around out there, make sure the lot's empty, and the girls all got to their cars okay.”
“Okay, uncle Tommy,” Jon called back. The dopey smile that he usually wore settled back on his face as he stepped out into the darkness. Tommy turned back to Beth.
'Billy Jingo,” he said.
Beth looked at him.
“I think that kid is bad news for you... Not telling you how you should live your life, just distributing advice... A girl like you, a dancer, don't need a distraction like that. The customers don't want to see no boyfriend hanging around. Spoils the fantasy.” He held her stare.
“It's not like that, Tommy. “Billy is a friend only... Lives in the same building.” She had caught the fact that he had said she was a dancer. Something she wasn't yet, unless...
“Uh huh, but he wants you. The kid is like a love sick puppy. If you could step back and look at it you would see it clearly. Are you telling me you are smart enough to handle Jon Jon, and you can't see this Jingo kid has it bad for you?”
Beth shrugged. “No... I know... I know that, but he knows it isn't going to happen. He knows what the deal is.”
“Good... That's all I'm saying, but you need to tell him to stay away... Can't be hanging around while you're working... See?”
Beth nodded. “I see.”
“Good, cause next week you start as a dancer. I know you...” He stopped as Beth lunged across the bar and hugged him, squealing as she did. He hugged her back, laughing.
She kissed his cheek, and then her smile went away a little as one of his hands cupped the side of her breast. Her eyes focused on his. “I think we'll become good friends, Baby,” he told her. She nodded as his hand roamed a little further, and then trailed away across the flat plains of her stomach. She pulled back. Tommy wore a crooked smile on his face. “So we understand each other?”
“Yeah,” Beth told him.
“So smile then. Let's have a drink... On me... Pour us something good, Baby,” Tommy told her.
3:00 am
Beth smoothed her skirt flat as she stepped out into the darkness of the parking lot. She had spent over a month trying to convince Tommy to let her dance. She had gotten her wish, and more than she had bargained for, a relationship with Tommy. She wasn't sure how that was going to be defined in public, but in private it was going to be defined as a sexual relationship. He had just defined it for her, she would have to wait to see what the public definition was going to be, but she had a good idea how it was going to be.
Nan, the dancer Tommy was currently seeing, was going to be upset. Tommy was not subtle. It had been clear that they had been seeing less and less of each other. She had no doubt that her first night of dancing he was going to make it clear she was his. Like a dog marking his territory. She sighed, off the street, but still getting fucked for money. She hated putting it that starkly in her head, but that was the plain truth. She was still selling it, just different terms, better money, better protection. She heard footsteps running behind her and her breath caught in her throat. She turned as the club door that exited to the parking lot banged shut.
“Beth,” Jon yelled. “Beth.”
She stopped and waited.
“Uncle Tommy said I should drive you home... He don't want you walking.”
She sighed. She had half expected it. Jon ran the twenty feet from the door to where she was. She changed direction and walked slowly toward Jon's car. Well, she thought, at least there
would be no more bullshit from Jon.
Jessie
Twenty feet away from Junior's Palace on Beechwood Avenue, the prostitutes were just beginning to show up in force, waiting for the early morning traffic. Jessie Chambers sat with his back against the wall of an alley: A needle ready, and a speedball cooking over a tin of shoe polish. There was a bum sleeping a little further down the alley. Jessie ignored him, watching the mixture in the blackened spoon begin to bubble, melting together.
Two days before he had been sitting in a diner off 4th avenue south waiting for his world to end. He had paid for the bottomless cup of coffee the place advertised, but ten cups had done nothing to improve his situation. He was still sick. He was still broke, and he needed something to take the edge off the real world, which had been sucking pretty hard at that time. A trucker had come in and ate his dinner just two stools away from Jessie, but every time he had worked up the courage to ask him for a couple of bucks the guy had stared him down so hard that he had changed his mind.
He had just made up his mind to leave. Even the waitress was staring hard every time he asked for more coffee. The cops couldn't be far away, when the trucker had reached back for his wallet, pulled it free and took a ten from inside and dropped it on the counter top.
Jessie watched. It was involuntary. One of those things you did when your head was full of sickness and static. Just a place for your ever moving eyes to fall. The wallet was one of those types he had seen bikers use. A long chain connecting it to the wide leather belt he wore. Hard to steal. Hard to even get a chance at. The man stuffed the wallet back into his pocket. Sloppy, Jessie saw, probably because he knew the chain was there and so if it did fall out he would know it. He turned and put his ass nearly in Jessie's face as he got up from the stool. The wallet was right there. Two inches from his nose, bulging from the pocket. The leather where the steel eye slipped through to hold the chain frayed, ripped, barely connected. The man straightened and the wallet slipped free. The chain caught on the pocket, slipped down inside, and the wallet came free, the leather holding the steel eye parted like butter, and the wallet fell into Jessie's lap. He nearly called out to the man before he could shut his mouth. His hand closed over the wallet and slipped it under his tattered windbreaker. The waitress spoke in his ear a second later.
“Listen... Buy something else of get the fuck out. You hear me? Otherwise, my boss,” she turned and waved one fat hand at the serve through window, “Says to call the cops.”
Jessie stared at her in disbelief. He was sure that every one in the diner had seen the wallet fall into his lap. He swallowed. “Yeah... Okay... I'm leaving,” he said with his croaky voice. Sometimes, getting high, he didn't speak for weeks. It just wasn't necessary. When he did he would find his voice rusty, his throat croaking out words like a frog. Sometimes he was right on the edge of not even being able to understand the words. Like they had suddenly become some foreign language. He cleared his throat, picked up the cup of cold coffee and drained it. “Going,” he said.
He got up from the stool, kept one hand in his pocket holding the wallet under the windbreaker and walked out the front door.
