by Jason Ridler
“You’re planning on jamming that glass into my eyes, aren’t you?”
He snarled.
“Well, I tried.”
He leapt at me as if a comic book werewolf drawn by Jack Kirby, a creature of rage and primal instinct that would not stop slashing until I was a stain of viscera on the wall, each paw clenching a glass dagger. But primal rage left his jaw wide open.
I hate fistfights.
I hate boxing.
I hate punches.
I hate ever having to turn my moneymakers into weapons of destruction.
And as that jacked up vet with a berserker brain lunged at me with ravenous intent, I was actually scared.
Scared I was going to kill him.
“Treat every fight like your last,” Dr. Fuji said, all the while my hands were chopping at a malformed hat-rack with a dozen arms, “because one day you will be right.” I ran through the sequences until they were blurs, and his steady diet of egg yokes and hemp oil felt like they were a joke that was eventually going to puke its way past my teeth, but Dr. Fuji was in charge of security for the show, and I’d been beat up so bad by a gang of hoods in Duluth for helping a black patron fix his tire that I’d endure any fallow treatment that Dr. Fuji had in play. His American-Occupation English was flawless and word around the tents was he’d been a spy and assassin throughout all of Asia, from Osaka to Samoa and all islands in between, but on the circuit he was our policeman, silently taking out rubes who had too much hooch and energy, breaking up fights on tour, his movie-star good looks being a great deflector of the usual bigotry we’d see with our foreign talent, but when it came, he endured, played the ignorant coolie and walked away, knowing he was the toughest SOB within a blast radius of a thousand miles. And Edgar got it in his mind to make me a protégé to “smarten me up” so I wouldn’t wake up pissing blood from kicks to my kidney, and so I became the only ten-year-old apprentice to Fuji’s teachings . . . judo, wrestling, wushu, karate, taji, aikido, words that felt weird in my mouth and were agony on my body, Fuji was a fan of all things violent, except boxing, which he called “idiot gladiatorial contests,” but he knew the need of a good punch and how best to drop a man twice your size with a tiny fist at the right place—
Fulton pounced, and before you could yell lights out, a left cross snaked out of me with the full power of my spinning form, aura, chi, and chakras. When knuckles met chin, my ears popped. Shivers ran through my arm as Fulton’s rock-jaw shook as if I’d punched a pineapple Jell-O mold.
Two slices from the broken glass came for my head, and I ducked and turned to avoid being headless. Twisting on my heel, I watched as a closed-eyed Fulton crashed into the wall, bounced to the floor, and then rolled on to all fours. His jaw hung down like busted ventriloquist dummy.
He was down, but not out.
I gulped.
That punch was meant to destroy him, not annoy him.
A cut bled from his cheek, where my little green pinky ring had branded him as deep as the sigil on his back . . . which flared red and black.
He shook his jaw, and it snapped back into place as blood pooled around his fists, both still clutching shards. He craned his neck, eyes red, and growled.
“Put on the damn anting-anting, you idiot!” Izzy yelled from down her hallway.
Fulton looked back at her, so I ax-kicked his neck. His head bounced on the floor, but he pushed himself up, careened his neck.
His face was a mass of broken glass, streams of bright blood, and red eyes, a horror show thrown into a wrestling match.
I needed more than Fuji’s teachings to work this guy over. I dipped one hand in my pocket when sirens roared. Their blaring wail stole Fulton’s attention.
He rampaged through the hole he’d made in the glass door and people parted like the red sea.
Izzy stood in her doorway. “See how it works?”
I waded through the glass toward her, tried to say something clever, then gripped my sore jaw. “Yes, ma’am,” I muttered.
“Go after him, James. Make him pay. Insurance doesn’t cover you bringing monsters to my work place!” Izzy was cross-armed and all business.
I pantomimed tipping my hat as I hit the street.
“Don’t play cowboy with me, James! Make this right!”
I pressed my cheek so I couldn’t hear Izzy’s voice rebound in my skull and hustled toward Lilith, wanting to hit the street before the fuzz landed. But the sirens were screaming and the light smacking me in the face. Now I had to deal with LA’s finest.
“Stop right there!”
I knew the voice. Hackles went apeshit.
The slow walk of a power-drunk cop ground my gears as the smug, fit face I’d wanted to punch more times than any sigil-soaked veteran grinned at me. And the fucker still smelled like lemons.
“Well! Jimmie Brimstone!” said Officer Richard Dixon. “What a charming turn of events!”
CHAPTER 16
DIXON GRINNED WITH HIS WIDE IRISH MUG, THE KIND THE English had tried to kick into oblivion for four hundred years but without permanent success. His beat-blues were as crisp and sharp as his blond buzz haircut, and they hung off a very wiry frame that packed a lot of kilojoules into taut muscles. Dixon was a gym rat and health freak, teetotaler, and wouldn’t smoke if the IRA ordered it. Behind him, throngs of hippies, heads, and rich ladies with strange cats watched us like a one-act play.
“Thought you’d moved back to Oakland, Jimmie.”
I smiled. “Know what the man said, you can’t go home again.”
“What brings you to LA?”
“Oh fame, fortune, my name in lights.”
“You thinking of trading in that circus for Hollywood?”
“Everything’s a circus if you look at it right: rubes, shit, and clowns.”
Dixon snorted. “Shakespeare, you ain’t. Tell me what happened here, Jimmie?”
Swallowing my loathing for his voice, that nickname, and the false sense of familiarity that was a mask for contempt draped in power, I said. “Well, Officer Dicks.”
“That’s Dixon, Jimmie.”
“Of course. Well, I was just visiting an old friend when, well, one of today’s youths had what I think you experts in law enforcement call a ‘freak out.’ It sure scared me. He crashed through the door like a Loony Toon . . . get it? Or am I going to fast? Shouldn’t you be writing this down?”
He crossed his hard, thin arms. Cuts and scrapes and a scars buried under white-blond hair. “Blood on the floor and a lot of witnesses. Better hurry and get to the point, Jimmie, before I lose count of how many charges to stick to your good name.”
My smile hitched. “Officer, I hope you’re not threatening to brand me with crimes I didn’t commit. Think of the pristine reputation of the LAPD.” He was close enough for me to smell his citrus breath, courtesy of that lemon tea he always drank. Dixon was far more annoying than the crooked shits who did “night shopping” of local businesses, worked over guys on the beach for shit and giggles, or harassed the legions of beauties of this town because of “busted” tail lights. Serve and Protect became Use and Abuse.
No, if Dixon was one of those shitbirds, I’d make his life a living hell by putting sugar in his gas tank once a month and making sure whoever served him free coffee in this town did so with a side order of spit. Instead, Dixon was far, far more annoying.
He was straight. Legit. A square with a badge.
But he was also an asshole. Had been since Oakland, when I left my best “mate” behind when the circus came to town. Now? His best mate was the law. “Try my patience, Jimmie,” Dixon said. “I’ve got all night.”
But I didn’t. “What can I say? Some Joe walked in here, broke through the glass of Isabella’s shop, started tearing it down, I tried to help,” I pointed at my swollen cheek, “got an elbow in the mush for my trouble, and when I kicked him in the balls he left.”
“Why was he after you?”
“Never said he was. Motive is your job, officer. Not mine.”
&nb
sp; Dixon grimaced. “What did he look like?”
“Hard to tell. It happened so fast. But he was a white male. That I know for sure.”
“You’re making my shit itch, Jimmie.” Every time he said my name like I was still a shithead kid at the docks, I wanted to break his jaw. There’s nothing so vile as power fisted deep into a righteous asshole. “Guess I’ll have to take you downtown for a round of mug shots of white males.”
Fuck you, Dixon. If he got me in the hole . . . I’d never find Nico, I’d never find Maxine. Whatever trail was hot tonight would go colder than a nun’s teat when I popped out. But Dixon wouldn’t give me a break. He wouldn’t take a bribe. And if I ran he’d follow, and tar me with the thousands of parking tickets Lilith had, then impound my girl for her two black eyes. Blood rushed through my veins so damn fast I felt sick, fearing the blue web of the LAPD.
“Officer Dixon!”
Izzy walked like a queen through the shattered glass. “How dare you accost this man, who did everything he could to save my office while you and your people were nowhere around! Useless. This man needs medical attention, not the third degree. And the criminal who did it ran out of here. Down that way!” She pointed down the Strip, then gave a near-perfect description of Fulton. “Tell me you are going after him, now, Officer! Tell me you are not letting a criminal get away!”
God bless you, Izzy.
Dixon nodded at her, grimaced at me. “We’re not done, Jimmie.”
“That way, Officers!” Izzy yelled, and Dixon was off like a bullet through the throng of long hairs and afros who’d stayed through all of Act One. One grease-faced teen applauded twice. Or was trying to catch an imaginary fairy.
“Thanks, Izzy,” I said. “I owe you—”
I could not have stopped the slap even if I’d been Joyriding, and it hit my good cheek like a triple dose of thunder. “Idiot! Bringing your bad kapalaran to my office. Stop the monster, James. And fast. Go!”
I did, both cheek smarting, anting-anting in my pocket.
Fishing for a dime, I made a call in a stained phone booth, cramped and stinking of ammonia and hash. Words pressed past my lips and shook my sore cheeks.
“Wild Card Casino, please.”
CHAPTER 17
THE WEB OF CRACKS BEFORE ME CHEWED ON THE DARKENING sunset. Pain flexed in my face from Fulton’s elbow, but I sat in Lilith and counted the stars around my vision as luck, because he could have probably torn my head off if he wanted to.
Nico was gone.
Maybe Fulton had found her, tore her apart . . . but unlikely. He’d have torn the doors off of her room. I didn’t know where she was, who took her, if anyone. Would she have left a note if she knew where Maxine was?
The “Damsel in Distress” film I’d been in was now split into two. And if I didn’t find both, my payment went up in smoke. There were only two leads in what was quickly becoming a gonzo goose chase. I revved Lilith’s engine. It was Nazis before pornography. That had to be an aphorism somewhere in the underverse.
Worry doesn’t make me drive fast, but closing times do. Most legit shops close at eight. Lilith roared into the evening traffic thickened with hash smoke from the open windows of Dodges and low riding Chevys. Guitars lathered in static and distortion trailed after the puffs of thick smoke. On the street, some kind of tortured animal man screamed and wailed with a posturing of blues musicians who’d seen far more of the evil in this world than these skinny wraiths of rock and roll could comprehend.
I revved up, shoved in an eight track that only worked when Lilith was in the mood, and rolled the pieces of danger I’d collected in my head. John Lee Hooker’s growling voice hit me in the solar plexus as I drove like a dog with my head out the window, singing “Boom, Boom.”
Wind drove its fingers through my hair like an invisible comb and I hadn’t realized how sweaty I had been until being air dried while I shucked and jived through the rat race traffic of the Strip, neon signs brighter than the fading sun, ocean breeze as intoxicating as hope for the damned.
Hope and two leads was all I had to play with.
“Boom, boom.”
The Wild Card Casino was a neon bunker built for giants and home to many gamblers on the Strip, and it soaked the night with blazing art deco sign with symbols of joy zipping on and off: a joker face, a cowboy, and the bottom half of a woman in go-go boots. It reminded me of a copy of Zap, a smart and dirty comic book I read in a port-o-san at Altamont, drawn by some head named Crumb, about a bug-eyed man chasing a woman that was only ass and legs and breasts but no head. I shook the image away, but the neon kept it resurrected. I double-parked a block away.
The red and yellow marquee proudly presented such talents as Steve and Eddie and that no-account putz and career has-been Frankie Mutts as the opener, with special guest “Lou Masters, the God of Magic.” But underneath the display stood a man in three-piece burgundy suit who seemed to suck in all the light around him, and whose presence cut a swath of personal space, as if his double-breasted coat was punching the air in front of him. His hair was short, his sideburns trimmed, face dark and without an ounce of joy, brush mustache as trimmed and flawless as Robert Goulet’s.
Just what you’d want in a Casino security agent.
I left Lilith and jogged to the front of the Casino as the six-foot-six enforcer came close and, hell, I almost backed away when he approached. “Cactus. You’re looking well.”
Cactus tilted his head to look at Lilith. “You should kick out those windows. Less hassles from the cops.” I appreciated that he didn’t mention buying new ones, considering his suit cost more than most of my organs on the black market. Cactus picked a glass shard from my shoulder, looked at Lilith, then back at me, trying to map my day. “You need to keep your guard up more. You’re swelling up like bad fruit.”
“Thanks, coach.”
“You’re dressed for a shotgun wedding,” he said, flicking the glass without scratching his callused fingers. “Why?”
“Long story,” I said. “And not why I called.”
“Then talk,” Cactus said. “I lose my men’s respect if I seem an elitist bastard who can take smoke breaks whenever he wants.” Just another reason Cactus was the best NCO we had. His sense of duty was far deeper than us white kids trying to be tougher than our fathers who beat the Emperor and the Fuhrer. Cactus could trace his family’s warrior culture back to when the Apache warred with the Spanish. Wasting his time was an insult.
“I’m crashing into a mess of trouble.”
He shook his head so gently it was hard to register his disdain. “That’s why you called me? Muscle?”
“No. I just need a deck of cards.”
Cactus considered me with the kind of hard stare you only see from former soldiers who end up in Westerns, glaring a thousand yards into the camera and trying to murder the audience as if they were a legion of SS soldiers. “Cards?”
“Yes. Standard-issue Bicycles will do.”
“What kind of trouble requires a deck of cards?”
I laughed. “The kind I can handle, Cactus, but I’m currently locked out of my office, so if you could help me out, I’d be—”
“You’re not answering my questions.” Cactus had been a lieutenant in the Counter Intelligence Corps during the Second World War’s last year, and rumor was he was an excellent investigator and interrogator himself, but by the time he was with me? Kicked down to Sergeant in a Marine platoon, freezing his sack off at Chosin, but no one knew why. But the command voice had stayed. He reached into his breast pocket “Name your trouble.”
“Oh, nothing much. Just some young fans of the Third Reich, probably worshiping Hitler as a god, selling Nazi trinkets and whatnot to the next generation of junior fascist. Now, about those cards. I can pay now—”
Cactus tossed something blue and white. I snatched it from the air, old blue and white packaging. “Nice. God, no matter how bad my day gets, a new deck always makes me feel like things are going my way.”
&n
bsp; Cactus still glared death. “You’re messing with Nazis. Why?”
“Private client business, Cactus.”
“Client.”
“I got my P. I. License.”
His left eyebrow rose. “You’re an investigator?”
“Licensed and bonded.”
It was unclear who he was more furious with: me, for screwing around in his old profession, or the State of California for making such a grievous mistake. “Ask me to help you.”
“That’s not why— “
He stepped forward, his voice low, cold, and deadly. “You knew I’d react to Nazis being in my backyard. You knew I’d view you having some dime store Pinkerton badge with rage. You want me to come with you. That bullshit carney psychology may fool the rubes you ran with as a kid, but they are horseshit to me. You want the help of a friend, you ask. You want to get in the long line of white men feeding me bullshit, be my guest, but you will be the first one I break in half today.” His breath was hotter than Mojave sand.
“Cactus?”
“Yes?”
“Will you help me beat up some Nazis?”
“Yes.”
“Hey! You!” From just outside the Casino’s mouth spewed a man in flared jeans and a sweat-stained silk shirt. “You’re the asshole who had me thrown out! Hey, speak English?”
I held my breath for two reasons. First, if I didn’t practice I’d lose my ability to hold it for five minutes: roughly twice the time it takes to get out of the Chinese Water Torture Cell, which Edgar thought was the “safest” way to teach. Also, it would help keep my mouth shut as Cactus dealt with this bozo. I massaged the deck and smiled: this would be fun.
The guy was twenty, drunk and high and angry, mustache like two blond feathers rubbing asses upon his lip. Cactus turned to face him. “I was on a roll in there, Chief!” The moron was stabbing the air in front of Cactus’s face with his finger. “How dare you toss me out like I’m trash. You know how much money I throw in your direction?”
Cactus’s voice was low, but clear, and without a trace of anger. “Mr. Coleman, you can’t touch the waitresses. You were given a warning. We only give one warning.”
