"I'll call you with our next moves."
I hung up and turned to find Alexa standing in the doorway looking at me.
"They say, life's a journey," she said, a tinge of sadness in her voice. "But for me, it usually feels more like a lesson."
I took her in my arms and kissed her.
We went into our room and made love. It wasn't as wild as the last time, but we had found our rhythm again. The closeness that followed was incredible.
Alexa snuggled against me, burying her face in my neck. "I love the way you smell," she said.
"Gym socks?"
We cuddled and caressed and ended up making love all over again.
Later, as the sun began to set, I dressed for my normal evening jog.
"I'd go with you, but you wore me out," Alexa teased. "I'm gonna hang here and see if I can come up with a way to lay our cards down. We can't go to Jane Sasso. I don't trust her."
"Maybe Jeb," I suggested.
"Maybe," she said, "or Tony. You can bet Tito Morales is already working on a way to shut us down. He doesn't know that we've got the Homeland piece yet, but we've got to move fast."
"Gives me something to think about while I'm on my run."
I left the house at eight-forty-five, just as the sun dipped below the horizon. The Pacific Ocean looked flat and the setting sun had turned it a beautiful shade of red-orange. I jogged along the bike path toward Venice Beach feeling stronger with each stride, my steps landing with more authority. I started to get into it, running evenly, feeling at one with my body.
As I ran, I began looking for the right way to expose all this to the department. I knew people inside the LAPD would want to keep it quiet, so there would be political forces lined up against us. I also couldn't dismiss Wade Wyatt's powerful father, Aubrey. God only knew what kind of trouble he could cause. One option was to go straight to the press. Once it was all out in the open, it would develop a life of its own. Even though that option had merit, I sort of hated it. I still carried a badge. Blind-siding the department in the press was cheesy. Nonetheless, it had some positive elements, so I figured I should probably discuss it with Alexa.
I thought about my wife. I now saw only occasional flashes of the disorganized Alexa who had shared my home, but not my life for the past year. The wild, damn-the-torpedoes woman was fun, but not exactly what I'd bargained for. I desperately wanted the woman I married. Our ships were closer, but not yet side by side.
Then, it felt like my head exploded. It was like a starburst. Flashes of white and a burst of bright orange. One brief thought occurred as I started to fall.
Another stroke?
In that millisecond before I lost consciousness, I knew whatever was happening was major. As I blacked out I knew I was in big trouble.
Chapter 50
I regained consciousness.
Rivulets of sweat ran down my back and into my crotch. I was instantly nauseous, on the verge of throwing up. I opened my eyes into blinding light. My shirt was off and silver duct tape pinned my arms and legs securely to the frame of a rolling office chair while my exposed upper body slowly turned bright pink. Where the hell am If I thought.
Then I saw a professional paint sprayer with a long rubber hose attached to a compressor, hanging from a rack. Four, wall-sized aluminum reflectors fitted with large heat-producing lights shined down on me from two walls. That's when I knew. I was inside the paint bay at the Church of Destruction, being cooked alive.
My head throbbed while my stomach continued to churn. Mike Church and a VSL veterano I remembered as Tyler Cisneros were standing on the far side of the room beside a partially open door trying to escape the oppressive heat.
"Turn 'em off," I croaked, unable to stand even another minute of this.
Mike Church spun around. His overlit pitted complexion was slick with sweat. He walked over, leaned in, and studied me like a bug pinned to a board. In his right hand, he was holding an Arwen 37, which I knew from a week of intense riot training at the Academy, was special-issue police department ordnance. The Arwen fires two-inch-long, cylindrical, baton rounds made of hard black rubber. According to the LAPD information office, we use these weapons exclusively to quell "incidents of civil unrest," which is code for riot gun.
Suddenly Church backed away and pointed it at me, saying, "Check it out, homes."
He fired from only fifteen feet away. The two-inch-long, hard rubber cylinder flew out of the tube barrel and hit my shoulder like a Mike Tyson right. I let out an agonized moan. The Arwen is supposed to be a nonlethal alternative weapon, but our Academy instructors had told us if fired at point-blank range to the head, it could be deadly.
"Get ready to have a bad last forty minutes," Church said maliciously.
That's when the lights that were cooking me suddenly went out, taking away the wall of blistering heat and leaving the booth dimly illuminated by two small overhead bulbs.
"Turn those things back on," Church ordered Cisneros, who was standing by the door. "I'm cooking me some roasted pig here."
My stomach suddenly lurched and I projectile-vomited the booze Alexa and I had consumed earlier in premature celebration. Some of it splattered on Mike Church.
"Sorry about that," I muttered weakly.
Church stepped forward and hit me with the butt of the gun, bringing it down sideways across my head. It opened a gash on my cheek and I almost went out, fought for consciousness, managed to hang on.
"We've got to wait for Brian," Cisneros said. "He doesn't want to mess him up too bad."
"Fuck Brian. Turn the lights back on," Church demanded.
"If we take him out to Six Flags, we don't want the cops to find no body that's all charred and shit. That won't look like no accident," a third man argued. My eyes, slow to adjust in the sudden gloom, could barely identify another VSL banger, Jose Diego, on the far side of the room.
"You two are fucking pussies," Church said, but the lights stayed off.
For the next twenty minutes, Church never let go of the Arwen 37 and, just to amuse himself, he would occasionally turn and say "Hey, Scully, here comes the Goodyear blimp." Then he'd fire another rubber baton at me. The round would strike my body, breaking blood vessels under my skin, leaving big, blue-red marks wherever it hit. Each time he fired, I almost lost consciousness.
During this ugly demonstration of riot gun effectiveness, I had one coherent thought. If the Arwen was what had knocked me out when I was jogging on the Venice bike path, then it was also probably the murder weapon Alexa and I had been looking for. I wondered if Church used it at point-blank range to kill his own father in the shower, and later to incapacitate Ron Torgason before drowning him in the swimming pool. The hard rubber batons, if fired to the head at close range, would probably result in the kind of skull trauma we'd seen in both autopsy photos. But even as I had this thought, I knew it came way too late to do me much good.
I don't know how long I was forced to endure this punishment, but sometime later Brian Devine walked into the paint bay wearing jeans and a police windbreaker. He took the riot gun out of Mike's hand and smiled. "You really love this thing, don't ya, Churchy? If you behave, maybe I'll let you keep it."
He checked the clip, looked over at my bruised body, then smiled. "Man, this may be the new American record. How many did you fire at him?"
"Lieutenant, this is coming apart," I croaked. "The department knows about everything. You can't be dumb enough to partner up with these idiots."
" 'Cept I'm not the idiot taped to a chair," he said.
"They got fifteen million. I hope you got a fair cut of that," hoping to produce some trouble. It didn't work.
"Nice try," he said. "But I'm a very happy citizen. Got my boat all stocked and ready to go in Mexico. Right now, we're just in the loose-end business. Pisses me off I didn't close your account years ago. Would've saved me a lot of trouble." Then he turned and fired the Arwen at me from ten feet away. The hard rubber round hit my forehead and I was out. I ne
ver even heard the riot gun's retort.
Chapter 51
"Colossus is still the largest dual track wooden coaster in the world," Mike Church was saying.
"Yep. That's one sweet ride, homes," somebody on my right agreed.
As I came to, I realized my hands were bound. My shirt was back on, but blisters were starting to form on my chest and, of all places, under my arms. My forehead throbbed where the rubber baton had knocked me out. I sat in agony playing possum.
"They built that monster way back in the seventies." Church was speaking again. "It was already old school by the time I started banging out here. When I was a TG, I sold seeds and stems in the midway. I was just eleven. When I was fifteen, I even got a summer job here and worked the maintenance shed. I learned where the underground service tunnels are, how to sneak on rides. Still got my old park maintenance badge." Through slits in my eyelashes, I saw him hold up a plastic-encased ID card dangling from a cord around his neck. "Ever since that summer I don't never even have to pay to get in this place, 'cause I know where the old drainage culvert opens up that runs under the park."
I opened my eyes a bit wider. I was in the back of somebody's big SUV. A Cadillac Escalade. Gray leather. Lots of video extras. I didn't move, trying to scope out the car without turning my head. The same three were in here with me. Tyler Cisneros and Jose Diego were on either side of me in the back. Church was driving, spinning out happy memories from his banging days at Tragic Magic.
"You won't believe how it was back then," he went on. "Back before these dumb park fucks realized they had a youth violence problem. This place was supposed to be a gang demilitarized zone, but there were asesinos out here, so you better believe bad shit went down every weekend."
Church put on his blinker, then turned off the highway into a parking lot. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed acres of parked cars. We pulled up to a booth to get a parking ticket. I kept quiet, looking for any chance to alter the odds.
"Busy out here tonight," I heard Church say to the booth operator. I knew they had good radio communications between all park employees and was about to try something when I suddenly felt a knifepoint press between my ribs. I looked right and saw Tyler Cisneros shake his head sadly.
"No lo hace," he said softly.
"Lot Four. Follow the yellow line," the ticket taker instructed.
"Thanks," Church answered. The Escalade started moving again. "Fuck Lot Four," he said. "I want to go to the north end of Six, way over by the fence."
"This guy's awake," Cisneros said.
Church turned and looked back at me. "Don't go cowboy on us, Scully. Keep it cool, dude."
We drove in silence for a minute before Church craned his head and looked up at Colossus. "Man, look at that cbingada/" The giant coaster loomed a hundred and twenty-five feet above us. Occasionally, a trainload of joyriders would streak past, screaming in delight, as the wheels rattling on the hardwood tracks set up a thunderous roar.
Church pulled out a cell and dialed while he drove. "We're here," he said. "We're gonna take him in through my special way. You got your guys ready?" There was a long beat. "I'm just asking. Don't have a fucking aneurism." He closed his cell. "What an asshole." There were a lot of assholes in this equation, but I figured he had to be talking about Lieutenant Devine.
I tried to come up with an alternate plan. It felt like my hands were secured with plastic riot cuffs. I was in such pain that I had to fight not to cry out every time the Escalade lurched or bounced over one of the parking lot's speed bumps.
"The last drop is one hijo de puta," Church enthused. We were cruising the north lot while Church looked for a suitable parking space. "Hundred and fifteen feet, straight down. Hey, Scully, hope you like coasters, man." I didn't answer. Church laughed as he nosed the Escalade into an empty slot. We were at the far end of the new north lot and there were very few cars.
"Get the wheelchair," Church ordered.
Diego got out of the Escalade and started to unload a wheelchair from the back luggage area.
"Hey, Scully. Check it out," Church said happily. "This fucking coaster goes over sixty miles an hour. It's not quite as fast as Goliath or Viper, but those two run on pipe ramps. You gotta appreciate retro when it comes to the great coasters. You feel me, homes?"
I didn't answer.
I felt the back door open and then Diego pulled me out of the SUV. My blisters were killing me, my body bruised and broken. When they yanked me, I let out an agonized scream.
Somebody shoved an old sock into my mouth and the next thing I knew, I was being loaded into the wheelchair. A smelly red blanket was thrown over me and tucked under my chin. I was starting to shiver and hoped I wasn't going into shock.
Church pulled out his cell and hit redial. "We're here," he said. "Get Juan and Ramon to check the refit shed under the ride. It's usually empty after six. We'll be in the park in a few."
He hung up, then took the handles on the wheelchair and began to push me across the parking lot. "Man, I love this place," he rambled. "Put in my first real work here. Shanked two North Hollywood Razas under this bitch. My 'blood in' ritual. After that, I was bueno por vida." He tapped the back of my head. "You know por vida, Scully? Means 'for life.' Once I shanked those two dirtbags, nobody in my set ever had the balls to fuck with me. From then on, I was a designated hitter."
We stopped in front of a chain-link fence, which had been pre-cut. Diego and Cisneros pried it open and bent it back, then the three of them picked up the chair and handed it roughly through the opening in the fence with me still sitting in the damn thing. Then they lifted the chair over the curb on a concrete drainage sluiceway and set it down again. Church started us rolling and suddenly we were moving way too fast down the sides of the steep drainage ditch.
"Whooooeeee!" Church sang out as the chair picked up speed, rocketing down the forty-five-degree side of the culvert with him, riding the back, holding the handles.
I could hear the heels on his cycle boots scraping on the pavement as he skidded along behind, holding on, trying to keep the chair from tipping over. I almost fell out twice, but Church kept me upright as we finally rolled out and came to a stop on the mossy, weed-choked floor of the decommissioned spillway.
"You know, back when I was a TG I used to think if I hadda die, it should be on this fucking coaster. Ride one of those new California-style PTC fiberglass cars right off the track and out into space. Take a hundred and fifteen foot drop to the ground. What a cool way to cross the border, know what I'm sayin'? All these years later and you're gonna get to live my dream, homes."
Chapter 52
As they wheeled me through an underground drainage tunnel, Mike's flashlight played along the walls where somebody had painted the names of the various coaster rides in white paint next to metal ladders that led up to the catch drains above. We passed Viper and Superman the Escape, and kept moving along the damp tunnel until we finally stopped under Colossus. Church left us in the tunnel and scrambled up the ladder.
"Okay, it's clear," he called down a moment after he disappeared. "Hand el pito up." I was pulled out of the chair and lifted, still handcuffed. Again, I cried out through the sock in my mouth but my screams were muffled. My head bumped on the narrow drain opening as I was pulled up into a large, four-foot-high, drainage catch basin. Church had the drain cover off and they pulled me out of the basin, up into the cool night air. I looked around and saw we were underneath Colossus's huge wooden scaffolding. Trains roared by overhead, the screams of the coaster riders creating a deafening wall of noise.
"Get him up there," Church ordered, pointing at a set of wooden stairs. They led to a platform and a large warehouse building.
I felt hands yank me upright. My legs barely worked as they hustled me over pavement littered with trash that had dropped from the coaster above. Then I was carried up three flights of metal stairs, across a concrete stage, through a door, and into a large basketball-court-size building full of broken cars from Co
lossus. The fiberglass coaches sat on five or six fingers of track, each one with a service order stuck to its front. Some were waiting to be worked on, others were marked to be returned to the ride.
Brian Devine was waiting for us with three gang-bangers in white wife-beaters, none of whom I recognized. The vatos all had ornate VSL tattoos high on the back of their necks identifying them as veteranos.
"Get the sock outta his mouth," Devine said.
Somebody ripped it out and pushed me down onto the floor. The lieutenant grabbed a dirty metal folding chair, planted the legs over my body then straddled the chair, looking down over its back into my upturned face.
"Okay, tough guy, you're about to take the final exam." His manic eyes flashed dangerously. "Don't screw with me here, 'cause I have it in my power to make the end of your life fucking gruesome."
"I know everything, Brian. I know about you guys killing Juan Iglesia to get the bus company, how you dumped Ron Torgason over the beer contest. I got the whole playbook. It's already been turned over to PSB. You can kill me, but it doesn't make this go away,"
"Really." He looked at me, a slight smile flickering on his flat, hard face. "These last two days I've been on you and your wife like a coat of blue paint. I hung a wire in your house, put taps on your phone. When you shit, I hear the dookies splash. I been following you and your dingy wife around for almost two days. You ain't told nobody shit. You're both dead people. All I need from you before I croak you, is your case notes."
"My wife's already gone to Tony. Killing her does nothing for you. You're done, man."
"Your wife's so fucked up, nobody's gonna believe anything she tells 'em. But just to be safe, after I'm done with you, I always planned to swing by and pay her a visit. She's some damn fine hot-lookin' trim. Maybe she gets some sublime Devine before I dump her. I can make it easy or tough. But you stonewall me and I'll take both of you down in pieces."
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