by Alex Moss
The Dodge bowls over Koit and runs the length of the chassis all the way over his body.
Stelson flips around to see Koit ground into the tarmac, bloody, his clothes tattered, as though they had been fed through a meat grinder. Kenny and Tilman have stopped the car just past him. Koit is face down and clenching his fists in pain, squirming, but oddly not making a sound. Kenny pops the door of the Dodge. Stelson gets up and jumps inside.
“I thought you were trying to kill me.”
Kenny smiles. “Why should this asshole have what we can’t, comprendez?”
Koit is up on his knees now.
Kenny floors it. Stelson is knocked back into the seat and hears a thump and crack as Koit is run over one more time.
They speed off and pull out of the road behind Paulina Avenue, Stelson looking over his shoulder to see Koit get up off the ground and shoot a thousand yard stare back at him.
Stelson looks forward, stunned and reflective.
They take the scenic route back, tracking the ocean along Harbor Drive and onwards toward Manhattan Beach. They’re cruising, taking in the beach-life scene and the sky that’s running compromised shades of orange and pink. Stelson has plenty on his mind. He glances at his face in the rearview mirror, and then lingers on the eyes that have tempted so many.
“Why do you want them so bad?” asks Stelson.
“What are you talking about?” Kenny looks at him via the rear view. He knows full well what Stelson is inferring.
“What good are they without the rest of me attached to them?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Stelson.”
“You know what I mean.”
“They have a black-market value. You don’t wanna know what it is, but if we were sensible right now, which of course we ain’t, we’d be driving an armor-plated Humvee with an M2 machine gun mounted up top to protect yo sorry ass.”
“Damn straight,” Tilman agrees.
“Why?”
“Why aren’t we sensible? Tilman, maybe you can answer that?”
Tilman sniggers.
“Why do they have a black-market value, asshole?” inquires Stelson.
“Hell should I know? It’s a bit like a tiger’s penis. Who wants a tiger penis anyhow?” He probably knows more than he’s letting on, but Stelson lets it go for now.
“My Pa always said I should hide this affliction, and so I did. You dudes need to get me some new shades.”
“Sure thing. Don’t work yourself up about it.”
“My brother and I have always been okay.”
“You have to move in the right circles to get noticed. You also got lucky that scouts never spotted you. The black market for this kinda stuff is a niche. It’s like a lottery jackpot that we ever got wind of it.”
“You better zip it now, Kenny.” Tilman plays the good listener card and stops Kenny from yapping too much.
Kenny nods. “We need to get back to Anna.”
“I need to go see my brother first, before I drop off the map.” Stelson insists.
“Little shit is pushing his luck,” says Tilman, but both he and Kenny are clearly intrigued by the existence of a brother.
“Head over to the Valley. My brother has a landscape gardening business over there. He spends most of his time at that joint.”
“We know all about him,” Kenny confirms.
Stelson nods. He’s unsurprised by this admission.
They circumnavigate LAX and join the Pacific Coast Highway at Playa Vista and Lincoln Boulevard, through Marina Del Rey, and into Santa Monica. It’s getting late and most drivers have their headlights on, apart from Tilman.
They’re on the freeway again, dropping into the valley from their dissecting trek across the Hollywood Hills. The freeway is like a deep scar in the terrain, and ahead of them–the flat grid of suburban phosphorescence.
They exit at Van Nuys and Sherman Way and head north but only for a few meters.
Stelson slaps the back of Tilman’s seat. “Here. Right here.” They turn right into a low-key side street.
“His place is at the end on the left.”
They know this and don’t need directing.
The street is a dead end, truncated by an elevated man-made bank that marks the edge of the freeway. There is a small patch of littered no man’s land between the bank and some wire fencing, and on the left is a recently developed small industrial unit with a monitored entry gate, forecourt, and warehouse. The unit is also lit up like a football field that would indicate activity, paranoia, or both.
Tilman reverses the car back down the street and parks under a tree next to a non-descript apartment block. The ambient light from the freeway, and the Valley collectively, keeps the Charger plain to see, even at night.
“We’ll be waiting.” Kenny looks sternly at Stelson in the rearview. “Anna will be missing you. Don’t mess things up.”
Stelson nods and exits the vehicle. He’s holding back nerves, but his hands tremble a little. Satisfied, he strolls toward the lit up industrial unit.
Now that he’s close to the entry gate, he can hear the hum of an electricity generator. He stands under the closest CCTV camera and waits in artificial daylight. The floodlights are that bright. The gate buzzes and slides open on a track. Stelson tentatively steps onto the forecourt. As he closes in on the warehouse, he can see activity through the crack in the main door.
Workers hauling sacks and wearing white protective haz-mat suits. Buzzy for this time of night and all very off color for a gardening business.
In fact, the only real indication that this site belongs to a landscape gardening company is the large cluster of perennial and sub-tropical potted plants in the forecourt, perhaps due for delivery. A man in a haz-mat suit seems to step out from behind the miniature forest and cut Stelson off from his track toward the warehouse.
“You’re here to see Bobby?”
Stelson stops and nods. He needs to assert himself. He’s gone all meek and pathetic. “Is the son-of-a-bitch here?”
“Well sure. He’s the son-of-a-bitch who let you in. Who else would do the same? Come this way, smartass.” The man in the white haz-mat suit strides off to the side of the warehouse. “He’s in his office.”
The fractured glare of Bobby Floyd and his clownish make-up and sunken snake eyes cut a chill through the din of the evening. He’s frozen at a desk in an office that could be the inverse of Victor’s. Clutter everywhere. It exudes chaos and would take an army of detectives to fathom. If Bobby wasn’t here it would be hard to know where to look, but that problem does not exist right now.
Bobby holds Stelson’s attention by revealing nothing. No emotion, no movement–just a look.
“I’ve come here to warn you,” Stelson says to breaks the ice.
Bobby doesn’t react at first, and then bursts out laughing with the most god-awful cackle. He sounds insane. He starts rolling around in his chair as though there were electric current running through it.
“I’ve come here to warn you because someone is trying to kill us,” Stelson elaborates, for effect.
Bobby calms down, taking this all in. “And you’re telling me this because…”
“You’re my elder brother.”
“…who hates your guts and wants to kill your dumb ass.” And Bobby flips into a rage and pulls out a snub nose revolver from his desk draw and aims it at Stelson’s head.
Stelson shuts his eyes.
Bobby flicks the safety off. His hand, the gun, as still as a corpse. “You’re into something. You seem different and you got me intrigued by this move, comin’ here.”
“It’s the truth.” Stelson opens his eyes and looks down the barrel of the gun.
“Okay. Apart from all my pathetic and useless enemies, you and Pa, who else wants to put a bullet in my head?” He points the gun at hi
s own head in a crazy-mannered action.
“I never said anything about a bullet,” Stelson dead-pans. “They want these.” He covers his eyes with the palm of his hand.
Bobby looks at his brother, flicks the safety on, and places the gun on the desk in front of him. “You don’t think I already know that, you naïve little shit? We’re outcasts, Stelson. Always have been. You’ve only been safe so far ‘cause you’ve lead a small life in a tolerant ‘hood. Why do you think I have this face of nightmares?”
Stelson shrugs.
“It’s a goddamn deterrent. I’m the predator, not them.”
“Who is ‘them’?”
“You’ll find out in time.”
Stelson takes this in. “What are you planning, Bobby?”
“Somethin’ big. That’s all you need to know.”
“You’re making bombs, ain’t you?”
“You never saw a goddamn thing here tonight.” Bobby’s face conveys a threat on steroids. He’s turned a habit into an art form.
“Then we have nothing more to talk about. I’m not scared of you anymore. I’m leaving.” Stelson turns for the door and runs out of the office, around the side of the warehouse, and onto the forecourt.
Three men in haz-mat suits block his path.
He low tackles one of them to the ground and starts punching away like a kid in a school playground, but with real damage. The poor sucker is already crying for help as the others jump on Stelson’s back to try to pull him away. These guys are just overweight, underpaid illegals who have no desire or energy to fight someone else’s fight and they’re quickly tossed or kicked away by this piece of work with youth, strength, and aggression on his side.
Bobby steps up behind the scrum. “Let him walk.”
The men back off, all sweaty and short of breath.
Bobby is looking at the entry gate. He seems nervous and here’s why: Kenny and Tilman are standing there, watching it all. They don’t look at Bobby but Bobby looks at them and he’s spooked.
They all know each other for complicated reasons.
Stelson brushes himself down and studies his brother’s demeanor and the two dirty cops, Kenny and Tilman, standing there like the maverick guardian angels that they pretend to be now.
Bobby doesn’t even look at Stelson when he says, “There’s no coming back from this. What you’re into now you ain’t gettin’ out of alive. I’ll see you in hell, brother.”
And on that, he retreats to his office. The three illegals return to the warehouse.
Seconds later, the entry gate slides open and Stelson strolls out onto the street and back toward the parked Dodge, a few paces behind Kenny and Tilman.
They drive, leaving the valley on the 101 toward downtown.
“I’ve never seen Bobby like that,” says Stelson.
“That so?” Kenny says and glares at Stelson in the rearview.
“He was scared of you assholes.”
“I doubt it.”
“Then what?”
“The less said about tonight the better, catch my drift?”
“Yeah.”
They exit the freeway at the Hollywood Bowl.
SIXTEEN
Kenny, Tilman, and Stelson pull up to the Fayne mansion on South Muirfield Drive after midnight. All the street-side lights in the house are out. Tilman pops the trunk and retrieves a red shoulder bag and hands it to Stelson as he climbs out of the car. The bag is the same as the one Anna was shipping the item in, but stuffed full this time.
“What’s this?” asks Stelson.
“Change of clothes, etcetera, etcetera.” Tilman grins, slaps Stelson on the back, and then heads for the house with Kenny.
Stelson follows close behind, gripping the bag uneasily.
They let themselves in with their own set of keys. The mansion is deathly silent until it starts to rain outside. All three of them stand motionless for a moment to acclimate to the dark shadows of an unfamiliar home. Kenny considers the grand staircase to the next level but then moves toward another room on the ground floor.
Tilman and Stelson follow.
Kenny turns on a table lamp and unlocks a drinks cabinet. He cracks open a bottle of Scotch, grabs three glasses, and liberally pours into them.
The room is a comfortable haven of leather armchairs, mixed with furnishings slightly more feminine and ceiling-height shelves filled with books. They take their places in the masculine leather armchairs and all drink together in the low light. Their slight nervousness and unease subsides as the alcohol hits their bloodstreams.
Stelson is first to see the bottom of his glass. He licks his lips, grabs the red bag, and stands up.
“I need to go to bed.”
“You sure? You look like you could use another. We could see the night through together, us guys,” suggests Kenny.
“I’m goin’ to quit while I’m ahead.”
“Probably a good call. Save your strength for tomorrow. Anna’s gonna be pissed with you for taking so long to get back to her. I mean, all we needed to do was deliver a message to Victor, right, and oh what stories we have to tell. But I strongly suggest that we keep them to ourselves like I suggested.” He realizes he is rambling and takes another sip of his whisky.
Stelson saunters off.
“Stay safe.” Tilman says with deliberation.
Stelson pauses and turns back to them. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what it means.”
Stelson looks at them both in turn.
His eyes seem to glow in the dark–a vengeful, predatory gaze that hangs in the air like red mist long after Stelson has left the room.
Stelson walks across the hall to the staircase. He ascends, observing the cracks in the wall that have not been repaired, and the hanging picture of young Anna’s mother tying the laces on her running shoes.
He’s on the landing now and all the bedroom doors seem to be open. He moves toward Anna’s at the end of the hall. He stands in the doorway, breathing slightly heavier from the tension of what he really wants right now, from her.
He moves inside her room and his eyes adjust to the darker space. He sees the contours of her body on the sleigh bed. She’s on her side.
He advances close enough to gauge her breathing. The sound is slight. He needs to stand still to pick it up. He advances some more, close enough now that he’s standing over the bed, her body within arm’s reach. He listens again and this time she stirs and rolls over onto her back.
Her eyes open wide and she’s looking at Stelson without a hint of reaction or emotion.
The suspense created from this causes Stelson to suck his lungs in and pose like a chameleon.
Is she aware of him?
Her eyelids quiver but that’s it.
He moves backwards, slowly, rewinding the moment–a deep desire to either erase this intrusion or act on impulse and continue his advance by sliding under the covers.
He pauses to consider the dilemma.
She’s still staring at him and this creeps him out enough to pour a proverbial bucket of cold water over his loins. He leaves her room and quickly locates an available bed in another room down the hall, locks the door, undresses, and climbs under the cover of darkness and pulls it up over his head.
He lays there listening to his own breathing and the rain outside.
Eyes wide open, head above the covers. He can’t sleep. The alcohol in his blood compounded with his proximity to Anna has sent his heart rate into a gallop. He then senses something or someone in the room with him. He turns to peer through the darkness.
Shadows flutter from the floor to the hall outside. Movement, perhaps someone padding down the hall, sneaking about, spying on him. He takes a few deep breaths and climbs out of bed, fumbling for his clothes, half-dressing and leaving the room for the h
all and back toward Anna’s bedroom.
He enters and approaches the bed. It’s vacant. He knew it would be. He touches the sheets and absorbs her residual warmth while listening to the rain. It seems to beckon Stelson. He leaves her room and heads downstairs.
Kenny and Tilman have passed out in the leather chairs. Stelson weighs them up from the hall. He glances at the empty whisky bottle and imagines impaling each of them with a shard.
The bloody aftermath.
Stelson bathing in it.
Rapture.
He reins in the fantasy and moves on, passing through a living room and out into the garden via the half-open French doors.
He sees her dark outline. She’s standing near the pool.
As he gets closer, his perspective seems to alter, as though there was some interruption in the proceedings, some molten green flashes of rebooted memory inserted into the night and his view of the world–brief flashes of a woman standing in the same position as Anna. There is no rain. It’s the same view but from lower down.
It has to be a child’s viewpoint.
The vision is so brief and jarring. The woman half-turns–it’s Anna’s mother. She looks wasted, her face somewhat crooked with a broken stare, and wearing a long black gown that is either a nightdress or formal eveningwear. It’s hard to tell.
Then it’s over like inverse radio interference, as though it had never happened. The crackled green vision, accompanying silence are replaced by the chatter of pouring rain, and the view of the world is clear again.
Stelson is now directly behind Anna, her back to him. She’s seemingly entranced by the rapid plip-plopping of rain drops on the surface of the pool–a miniature meteor shower.
She’s soaked to the skin.
“I’ve been here before, haven’t I?” Stelson probes.
Anna sniffs.
“When I was just a kid?”
“You were never just a kid.”
He imagines pushing her into the pool for fun or to shut her up. He can’t decide which. He hates this hostility and craves her warmth and acceptance.
