On The Edge

by Daniel Cleaver

  The time for following procedure and doing things by the book had long passed. Almost nothing we’d done that day had been by the book. We were in a truckload of trouble if anyone found out and it slowly dawned on me that we’d become vigilantes, the deliberate act on my part of ditching the rockstar into the canyon was tantamount to murder. Although to be fair, he was trying to kill me at the time, but I couldn’t help thinking that I would have done that anyway knowing what I now know about him. I told my feelings to Mia. She said I was being stupid and to forget about it. We’d dispatched a scumbag who would have never been caught, as these guys operated on a different level; they were clever and they had top-notch lawyers and we had done the right thing, the only thing that was open to us and had no doubt saved many young girls from his clutches.

  I drove Mia towards her home up in the canyons. I’d not been there and I was looking forward to seeing where she lived. She suddenly said, “Go around by the bend.” Even in the dark I could see her eyes sparkling.

  “Return to the scene of the crime, ya mean?”

  “Absolutely.” She seemed tense or excited, I couldn’t tell which, and assumed that this was not a good sign, but we were near and I thought what the hell? I parked nearby, on the blacktop so as not to leave tire marks in the dirt; she accused me of being paranoid but I thought better be safe than sorry. We stared down into the darkness of the canyon; the chopper was a gentle glow of flames in the far-off distance somewhere near the basin of the drop. Mia turned in my direction, grabbed me and kissed me firmly on the mouth. For some reason, being at the scene of the crime had made her hot, which made me curious, but I was too carried away to care. We made love furiously, standing up at the side of the canyon in full view. I guess the sense of danger added to the enjoyment for her.

  “Slap me!” she said.

  Here we go again, I thought, but was happy to oblige. It was difficult trying to maintain my balance and slap her face. Between the slaps, we kissed like it was going out of fashion. I saw headlights approaching, shining in the trees above and would be rounding the bend any second. I tried to untangle myself, but Mia held onto me tightly and bucked hard against me. A truck rounded the bend, I saw the driver gawp at us and he almost followed the path that the rockstar’s chopper had taken earlier. His tires screeched and he managed to correct his path and then was on his way. Having sex in public, or being semi-nude, one or the other had set Mia off. Several vehicles passed but I was oblivious to them, engulfed in the frenzy that Mia created. She broke away and bent over the crash barrier for me to take her from behind. I complied and we were spent in seconds.

  “Wow!” I said for the second time that day. This woman was amazing. Dangerous. But amazing. I lit a cigarette and blew out smoke.

  “Wow, yourself,” she said and we sat on the crash barrier to get our breath back, then she burst into laughter. “Did you see the driver’s face?”

  “I bet he wasn’t expecting that.” I smiled and helped her to stand. We got back in my car and drove to her home.

  Mia’s Chalet, Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90046 – 01:25.

  We drove through the bends at a much more sedate pace and enjoyed the spectacular glimpses of Los Angeles spread out before us. It still looked busy with traffic even in the small hours. We twisted around the canyon. “It’s up here on the left,” she said as we neared the summit. “This one.” She pointed at a Swiss-looking wooden structure perched precariously on the edge of the canyon rim.

  “How do ya afford this on –?”

  “A police officer’s wages?” She finished my sentence. “I can’t. No, I did some modeling while trying to be an actress.”

  “It sure paid well.”

  “I got lucky with a series of TV commercials that were popular in Japan and I received repeat residuals.”

  She opened the door, deactivated the alarm, and led me into the family room that had floor-to-ceiling picture windows with uninterrupted views of the LA basin below. The twinkling streetlights were mostly in perfect straight lines, stretched to the south all the way to LAX, where I could see an airplane taking off and others circling, awaiting their instructions from the control tower to come in to land. Out to my right, I could see the white lights of the northbound cars on the Pacific Coast Highway and the red taillights heading away. Further out in the ocean I could make out the outline of Catalina Island. It was very impressive. “Stunning view.”

  “Do you want a tour?”

  “Sure.” She led me up an open-slatted stairway onto a balcony landing that also had incredible views. There were two bedrooms both with bathrooms and the master bedroom with a wooden balcony accessed from the French doors. She took a bottle of champagne from a well-stocked minifridge beside the king-sized bed.

  “This is my sort of chick!” said Elvis. I ignored him and we went out on the balcony to drink it. There was a welcome breeze and we sat on wooden chairs and gazed out across the city. “Is this a stilt house?” I asked.

  “More or less, there is a floor below the living room but it’s not habitable, it’s just for junk, then there are poles under that, all up to the latest code, should there be an earthquake, if that’s what you were thinking.”

  Actually, it was, but I didn’t want her to think I was a wuss. I liked this girl. She shared my love of danger and had a strong sense of right and wrong like me and, as of now, we had our own brand of vigilante justice.

  She smiled at me, we chinked our glasses and sipped the champagne in silence. A coyote bark broke the stillness and in an act of unreasonable jealousy, I wondered how many other men had seen this view.

  “You’re the first, hon,” she said reading my mind. “The first guy I’ve let into my inner sanctum.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself; it’s just all the other guys I’ve dated were such losers. I never thought that so many flaky guys could congregate in such a small geographic area.”

  “Welcome to Hollywood.”

  “It’s not just that, it’s the creeps and general weirdness. One guy even pretended to be dying of a fatal illness. Why? To gain sympathy, I guess. I was about to dump him, I must have nursed him for two months. Do you know he even shaved his head to fake chemotherapy treatment?”

  “What a jerk,” I laughed. “Evidently lacked self-esteem, or something.”

  “But that’s the strange thing, he was an actor on a daytime soap, he was popular, he shouldn’t have had a problem getting a date. You would think he’d be more stable, not this bizarre caricature he’d invented. He’d kept up the pretense of dying for two months!”

  “They can’t have all been like that.”

  “No, the others were worse,” she laughed.

  “Keep away from actors.”

  “Roger that,” she said and chuckled. “You would have thought that he’d have the good grace to die after going to all that trouble.”

  “Welcome to Hollyweird.” I raised my glass and she smiled. I looked out over the city and sighed contently. “You must love it here, it’s so peaceful.”

  “I thought the canyon would be fantastic for hiking and climbing but I don’t get the chance to use it as much as I’d like, what with work.”

  “Tell me about it. I live on the beach yet I only get to swim once a month if I’m lucky and I can’t remember the last time I surfed. And now the Hangman’s back we can kiss goodbye to any free time.”

  She sighed heavily and smiled at me and I felt a warm glow that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. Life was good. The coyote howled again and a thought popped into my mind, thinking about the scavenging coyotes. “Are we the other side of the canyon from where the bodies were dumped?”

  She pointed across the darkness. “Over there somewhere.”

  “You be careful,” I told her.

  “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

  “Well, I’m here now, to protect ya.”

  She laughed uncontrollably.

&nbs
p; “What’s so funny?” I asked. She laughed so much she had trouble breathing, even though it was at my expense. I was pleased she was laughing and not dwelling on the day’s traumatic events. I still don’t see why it was that funny.

  CHAPTER 16

  Areca Palms Apartments, 797 W Olympic Boulevard, CA 90015 – 22:15.

  Earlier that same evening the Hangman pulled up outside the red-brick apartment block and waited for the next victim to arrive home. Her routine was never changing, each night the same. She dated heavily and randomly, no two nights the same guy. She was a whore and she was going to get what she deserved. She slept with her date most nights, making her no better than a prostitute, worse because at least they charged money for their wantonness. They swapped their low morals for financial rewards, whereas this slut gave it away for free. Even if the guy changed each night the whore’s routine did not. Candy parked outside the building and climbed out of her yellow, dinged Subaru, chatting on her cellphone. She wore too much make-up and her streaked blond hair had been piled up on top of her head. She wore long, dangling earrings and a matching necklace. She wore the shortest of skirts and the lowest of tops, which would have had the guys swarming around like dogs, and had put in a nose stud for the occasion. Certainly not the way for a cop to dress.

  “Slut,” said the Hangman as Candy passed.

  Candy yelled excitedly into her cellphone as she walked past the yucca and cacti plants that gave the apartment block its name. “He said what? No way! Oh, it was the best, super-exciting; I can’t wait to go again.”

  Candy was alone for once; this was the moment the Hangman had been waiting for. “That won’t be happening,” thought the Hangman grimly. “You won’t be going anywhere again – except straight to Hell where they have a special place reserved for dirty sluts like you.”

  Candy entered the apartment building’s glass foyer, without a backward glance. I can’t wait to get you on my dissecting table, the Hangman thought, feeling a sexual pleasure. I’m going to torture you in a way that has never been recorded, not by a serial killer, that’s for sure. It’ll be a worldwide spectacular, the excruciating pain and cruelty will make people shudder the world over. It will be analyzed for decades to come. Candy will be famous in her own sweet way. She’ll become a name synonymous with death, gruesome death. She’ll stand out as a victim beyond anything attempted by Ed Gein, or even Jack the Ripper. Their victims were dispatched quickly and mercifully, their corpses were mutilated afterward, but by then they were beyond caring. It was the meticulous attention to detail that would startle and amaze. The Hangman had painstakingly amassed the historic tools necessary, all with a provenance proving that they had once been used as weapons of torture, albeit legalized torture, some hundreds of years earlier and they were going to be put to good use once more. The weapons would be slicing through skin, cutting into flesh, and tearing at the organs, and all the while Candy would be conscious.

  Thursday – June 30th

  Corner of Sunset and Vine, Hollywood, CA 90028 – 20:30.

  Mia and I were canvassing hookers on the Sunset Strip; it was early, so not many hookers or customers around. I thought it’d be a good time to ask a few questions. I remembered from when I was on Vice that the girls on the street used to be the first to know what was going on or if there were any new gangs in town. Anyone muscling in, there had been some trouble with Asians and more lately the Russians and others from the old Soviet Union, Ukrainians, and Bosnians in particular. I flashed my badge and the young girl turned sharply to walk away; I put my arm against the wall, trapping her. “Oh, man, leave me be. I got busted earlier in the week,” she whined.

  “I ain’t about to bust ya, I need to ask ya a couple of questions,” I said. She popped a shoulder, which I took to go ahead. “We’re after information on a pedophile ring?”

  “I don’t know nothing ’bout nothing.”

  Mia said, “Just answer the goddamned question, you sleazy whore.”

  “Whoa! What’s that about?” I led Mia back over to my Camaro.

  “I don’t care for disease-spreading hookers, that’s all.”

  “Stay here.” I went back over.

  “Lemme see a badge,” the hooker asked. I showed her. “Has there been a murder?” She snorted with derision. “What am I saying? It goes without saying there’s been a murder. Hookers are always being murdered.”

  “Get another job, then,” Mia snarled at her from the car.

  “I wanted to know if ya noticed a higher-than-normal turnover of girls?”

  “Disappearances, you mean?”

  “Hey, Spooky!” I turned and saw a tall hooker I vaguely remembered from a few years ago. “You back for a freebee, sugar?” she asked.

  I laughed and turned to Mia. “I never took a freebee.”

  Mia climbed from the vehicle and raised an eyebrow. “You paid?!”

  “I didn’t have sex with her,” I said, but my voice squeaked a bit, making me sound guilty: even I didn’t believe me. Mia looked disbelieving. I lowered my voice and said. “Besides, ‘she’s’ a ‘he’.”

  Mia looked ‘her’ up and down and then seemed satisfied.

  “What are you after, sugar, and let’s be quick about it, ’coz if I ain’t working I ain’t earning, you know what I mean?”

  “It’s a pedophile ring we think is connected to the murders up in the canyons?”

  “Were them poor souls hookers?”

  “That, or runaways,” I told her. “We think that a high-powered pedo ring has been operating under the radar for far too long now –”

  “Oh, that –”

  “What do ya mean, ‘oh, that’, ya know about this?”

  “Sure, everyone – uh-oh.” She looked over my shoulder to a small African-American. “It’s Big Bullion.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Our pimp.”

  I glanced over at the kid no more than twenty, a shade under five feet four, dressed from head to toe in shiny gold. “Why do they call him big? – oh is it . . .” I pointed down to my crotch.

  “Hell, no, he wishes,” she snorted. “Big Bullion, more like Tiny Tinkle.” The two hookers roared with laughter.

  “Hey, hey, hey, what’s so funny?” he shouted from a distance and moved to draw his gun.

  I said to Mia, “Get back in the car.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “I am. It ain’t safe.”

  “I’m a police officer. I’m trained in unarmed combat.”

  “I’ll deal with this,” I said firmly.

  She shook her head in dismay. “Suit yourself.” She climbed back into my Camaro.

  Big Bullion got close. He jiggled as he spoke, his feet kept moving as if he could hear music. I thought he was on drugs, probably a tweaker. “Get back to work, girls. Playtime’s over. And you,” he glared at me. “Take a hike if you know what’s good for you.”

  I flashed him my badge, but he was singularly unimpressed. “Beat it, cop, I don’t know nothing.”

  “Can ya stand still, man? Ya making me dizzy.” I looked at the ground. “I wouldn’t stand right there, mind you, it looks like . . .” I gazed down at the stain. “A patch of blood, or vomit, possibly a bit of both. Anyhow, maybe I’ll run ya downtown.”

  “For what? I ain’t done nothing!”

  “Well, ya lying to me for a start and if ya lying it means you’re guilty of something, and if you’re guilty of something, it probably means that you’re a murderer.”

  “What?! How did you make that leap?”

  I smirked, then he surprised me by pulling a switchblade and slowly approached me, waving the knife in front of him.

  “Spooky, do you need any help yet?” Mia asked.

  “Nah, I’m fine, this’ll be fun.” I took out my own switchblade and we circled each other. I caught Mia’s expression out the corner of my eye and she looked heavenward.

  Big Bullion smiled and I saw that all his teeth were gold, too. He lunged towards me, I sidest
epped and his momentum carried him forward. I chopped down on his knife arm and his blade clattered harmlessly into the gutter. I turned to face him. That was easy, I’d disarmed him first go.

  “Hey, that ain’t fair, I’m unarmed,” he whined, appealing to my sense of fair play and I put my switchblade back in my pocket. He smiled in appreciation and dummied a left hook, which I fell for and whacked me in the temple with his right. It felt like I’d been hit by a brick, I could feel blood dripping down my face as I hit the deck.

  “Need any help yet, hon?” Mia queried with delight in her voice.

  “Nah, I’m fine. Just getting warmed up.” I touched the side of my face and couldn’t understand why I was bleeding.

  “Ha!” sneered Big Bullion, waving a metal object over his fingers. “Brass knuckles, well, gold, solid gold knuckles. It packs a punch, don’t it?”

  So much for a fair fight. I moved to get up.

  “Stay down, man,” he said as I got onto my knees. “Alright, you’ve asked for it.” He signaled behind me. “My partner, Scared D. Katt. Now you’re in deep doo-doo.” I shook my head to clear my thoughts and stood upright.

  “Are you listening to me, fool?”

  “Yah, every word. Your partner’s one scaredy-cat. Urine. Voodoo.” I turned to see a man-mountain getting out of a bright gold pimpmobile, which sprang back up on its springs when he alighted. He had to be three hundred pounds and the mocha-colored skin of his face appeared to have lines tattooed across it.

  “Not scaredy-cat. Scar D. Katt. Scars, fool. He was attacked by the Tong. They tried to kill him with the ‘death by a thousand cuts.’ Those lines are scars, fool, hundreds of them,” Big Bullion said in awe.