Beautiful, Naked and Dead mm-1

by Josh Stallings

  “I don’t think you have any reason to kill me. That, and I think you know it’s going to cost you heavy to do it. I won’t go down easy.”

  “Provda, so why are you here, Mr. McGuire?” he said letting a fresh stream of smoke slip towards the oak-paneled ceiling.

  “This,” I said, handing him the skinny boy’s driver’s license. “Two Armenian punks have been poaching on the girls at the strip club where I work.” He turned the license over in his hand looking at it carefully.

  “And this involves me how? An Armenian farts in an elevator and the feds come looking for me. You think I have time to worry about what every Armenian does in all of California?”

  “Yes I do. Personally, I don’t think an Armenian steals a glance without you hearing about it.”

  “Ha, you think I am very powerful, omnipresent almost? And then you blame me for these wild young fools?”

  “I don’t blame you for anything.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Out of respect. I’m going to put them down. I thought if they were with your crew I’d give you fair warning.”

  “And if I told you not to touch them?”

  “I’d leave you my address so you wouldn’t have to look too hard for me after I dropped them.” I looked straight into his hard eyes. It was clear he had seen a lot of bad shit in his time, but so had I. Slowly a deep laugh rumbled up out of his chest.

  “Tough guy, huh? I like you, be a shame to gut you like a fish. Lucky for you, I don’t know this boy.” Then he raised his glass, “To your health.”

  The twins tried to burn holes in my back with their eyes as I walked out, but they didn’t say a word. Climbing on the Norton I gave them a two-fingered salute and rolled down the hill, heading for the flats of Glendale. The address on the license was one of many graceful apartment buildings built in the twenties, back when craftsmen actually gave a shit about their work. The windows were arched and thick, the lines of the building flowed down to the sidewalk. Even the shit brown the latest owners painted it couldn’t disguise its grace. Moving to the second-story landing, I took out my.38 and knocked. After a long moment the door opened a crack, with the chain still on. I put my shoulder to it with all my weight. The chain ripped out of the jamb and the door flew open, knocking the big boy tumbling onto the tan carpet. I stepped quickly in. Slamming the door behind me I swept the room with my.38. On a stained sofa the skinny boy sat with his leg in a cast from hip to toe. He was scrambling to reach his Glock on the coffee table, but when he saw my gun he gave up. The big boy stood up, he had a plaster patch over his nose, if he was in fear of me he sure hadn’t told his face the news.

  “We haven’t done shit!” the skinny boy yapped.

  “Is that any way to talk to a guest?” I motioned with my.38 for big boy to sit on the sofa. “You boys really screwed the pooch this time. You know a man they call the Pope of Figueroa?” They both nodded, worry starting to show. “Turns out he didn’t take kindly to you running a scam in his neighborhood. I may be able to square it with him, if you’re straight with me. Lie to me and you better pack your bags and head to the old country. Did you sweat the girls alone, or did you have help?”

  “We’re with the Broadway crew, so if those Italian fucks want…” I didn’t let him finish. I put my.38 in my pocket and went for the door. I had it open before he stopped me. “Hey, where are you going?”

  “I told you what would happen if you lied to me.”

  “Fuck you and fuck your friends in their fat grease-ball asses, the Italians are over and we’re running this town now bro, or didn’t you get the E-mail?” the skinny boy said, puffing up.

  “Only thing you’re running is your mouth. Gonna get you a slow death. See shit for brains, I just came from Pakka supreme Rafael Hakobian’s house, he never heard of you. Have a good life kid.” The skinny kid’s eyes darted wildly around in their sockets searching for the hidden camera and perky host to tell him it was all a big joke.

  “Tell him the truth,” the big guy said in a deep baritone.

  “We’re alone,” the skinny guy said.

  “You sure are,” I said. “Now the six-million dollar question, where did you go after I met you at the club?”

  “Where the fuck do. .” the skinny boy started but was shut down by a look from his friend. “We went to Glendale Adventist’s emergency room, they were backed up with a drive by, we didn’t get out ‘til the next morning.” I looked at him long and hard. “Call the hospital if you want, they’ll tell you.”

  “I’m going to.” I said and walked out. I didn’t need to make any more threats, they were scared little rabbits as it was, at least the little squid was. As for big boy, who the hell knew what was going on behind his stone face.

  I headed home tired, no closer to an answer then when I started. Back at the crib I fed Angel a half-pound of ground beef. After watching her wolf down her dinner, I lay down on the bed to play with her. I fell into a dreamless sleep for two solid hours. I woke up, showered, drank a cup of strong coffee and rode into work.

  It was a typically dead Monday night at the flesh palace, a few stragglers came in for a quick lap dance, then slunk out with a stain showing on their slacks. I asked Piper if she had ever known any girls that worked at the Cock’s Roost. I guessed right, it was one of Nevada’s infamous legal brothels. She’d known girls who went there, but none had come back to stripping. On the long twisted road of the sex trade, the direction was one way. Most started out bikini dancing, then moved to stripping, some went into porno, and others to prostitution. At every stop they drew lines in the sand, demarcation lines they would not cross, until time and cash blurred the lines and they had to draw new ones.

  “You’re a good boy, Moses, why you want to go chasing dragons?” Uncle Manny asked when I told him I needed to take some time off to look for Kelly’s killer. We were sitting in his office, his desk strewn with the week’s books.

  “You can have Doc take the extra shifts,” I said. “He can use it, I hear his old lady’s going to give him another rug-rat.” Doc was a huge, bighearted man, with skin as dark as night and a smile that could lighten the darkest room.

  “He is a good man, but you I trust. You understand?”

  “She was one of ours, Manny, we owe it to her.”

  “Very noble.”

  “No, it’s just something I have to do.”

  “Still, it is noble,” he said, thinking for a moment. Then from the open safe behind him he counted out two thousand dollars. “For you, for Kelly.” Pocketing the cash I shook his hand and went out to the bar. I asked Piper if she could look after Angel for me.

  “Mo, I kill house plants. I stay out all night, sleep all day. Do you really think I’m the poster child for adopt-a-pet?” She said.

  “No, I guess not.”

  “You take care of yourself,” she said in a wistful tone. “You come back to me in one piece.” She ran her hand gently across my cheek, then put on her stripper’s smile and turned away. As she swished off, I realized she meant it.

  CHAPTER 7

  I hit Helen up the next day while our dogs tore up the park. “I’d love to watch Angel for you. Maybe she can work the extra ten pounds off of Bruiser for me.” I didn’t tell her where I was going. If this thing went south, the less she knew, the better. I left Angel playing with Bruiser. Good-byes weren’t really my strong suit. I sold my bike for six grand to a guy who owned a shop that specialized in Nortons over in North Hollywood. I left him drooling over the flawless black paint and perfect chrome, I had bigger fish to fry. I took a bus ride over to Jason B’s, a wanna be actor who paid the bills by buying cars at the police auction and re-selling them over Ebay. He had a ’05 Ford Crown Vic police Interceptor I bought for his cost of twenty-three hundred dollars. It was big and black with white doors which I spray painted to match the body. With an old school V8 and computer driven fuel injection, the bitch was built for fast takeoffs. It had heavy-duty four-wheel discs to stop on a di
me, and a suspension tuned for ripping around corners at max speed. With a twenty gallon gas tank, it was a long range road beast built to take down the bad men. A gaping hole in the dashboard spoke of a missing radio and computer terminal. She wasn’t pretty but she would blend in on most streets and she was mine. For an extra fifty bucks Jason B tossed in a set of prop Nevada plates, they were hand-painted to look punched out. Although they wouldn’t hold up to close eye-balling, if the cops got that close I was screwed anyway. I had him transfer the papers on the car over to Johnny Stahl. He was a clean identity I’d built over the last ten years, with just enough of a paper trail to make him legal. Johnny owned a legally registered.45 automatic, a Visa card with a five hundred dollar limit and a library card. Johnny was twice the square I was. He was almost human.

  Back in East LA I had a neighborhood kid hook me up with a car stereo for forty bucks and a six pack of tall boys. If I was going to be rolling long and wide I needed tuneage. He cut a piece of plywood to fill the gaping dash and bolted it in. Like everything else in the Ford it was all go, no show.

  My house felt empty with Angel gone. Silly, I hadn’t had her that long but I missed her wagging tail and sloppy face. This is no time to go soft and cuddly so I loaded a Mossberg twelve-gauge riot gun, a Colt.45 1911 automatic, my S amp;W.38 and boxes of shells for all into the trunk of the Crown Vic. I didn’t know where the trail would lead, but I knew I should pack heavy just in case it turned ugly. I filled a gym bag with jeans, tee-shirts and socks. I took out my one and only nice suit. It was gray gabardine with black piping on its country western yoke. I added a white western shirt with pearl buttons, a scorpion bolo and a pair of black Tony Lama boots. Packed and ready, I was almost out the door when I noticed the Marilyn cookie jar with the charm bracelet wrapped around the handle on its lid. If I found Kelly’s sister, she might know what to do with Kelly’s remains. I set her in the back seat and rumbled out of town.

  Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros kicked a beat to my retreat from the city. Fuck Mick Jones, Strummer’s drunken growl will always be the heart and soul of the Clash. The only blessing in his death is the world will be spared an embarrassing oldies tour. I almost threw up when I heard Johnny Rotten and a less Vicious Sex Pistols played Trump’s place in Atlantic City. In case there was any doubt that the go-go 80’s had killed punk, that show put the nail in the coffin.

  The Crown Vic took to the freeways like a duck to water. It was still early enough so that the quitting traffic hadn’t clogged the road. In San Berdo I took the I-15 toward Vegas, up over the mountains and then a gentle sweep down into the desert. I had made this run enough times in my life, I probably could have done it with my eyes closed. Vegas had been my Camelot, the land where all the rules were clear and fair. Less than a tank of gas from LA and I was in a whole ‘nother world, one full of beautiful women who brought you drinks, lit your cigarettes and laughed at all your jokes. One good run at the blackjack table and I drove home with shiny new boots and two months rent. And if I lost, I’d had one hell of a time doing it. The main difference between Bob the bookie and a Vegas pit boss was, Bob would let me lose more than I had, in Vegas when I was broke, I was broke. I might have to hock my watch for gas money, but that was the worst it could get.

  Pushing the accelerator down an SUV full of college kids pulled over to let me fly by. One of the added benefits to driving an ex-cop car is when the other motorists see that familiar silhouette in their rear view, they get instant guilt and slow down to let you pass. Cruising along at a safe eighty miles an hour I had plenty of time to think. I had lived my life to this point without direction, letting the currents take me where they would. I was a ship without a rudder, and a questionable moral compass to guide me. My childhood was something I didn’t like to dwell on. A violent father who had skipped when I was six, and a mother who mixed equal parts gin and televangelism, she could quote all the parts in the Bible that made you feel shitty and small. Most afternoons she would fly into rages and tear the house up, by night she would pass out in front of the TV set while some preacher droned on about the cash he needed. My older brother Luke and I mostly raised ourselves. It wasn’t all bad, we had nothing to judge it against so it seemed like our lives, nothing more nothing less. We didn’t know that other kid’s moms tucked them in at night, or that their moms didn’t wake up every day with bloodshot eyes and sick headaches. We lived in a small two bedroom bungalow in a court of other paint chipped bungalows up on the sad side of Altadena. The court was populated by the retired, the recently rehabilitated and those like our mom, who lived on permanent disability. Luke and I were the only people under thirty so we kept to ourselves. In school we had a reputation as wild boys, probably well earned but it kept most of the parents from letting their progeny hang with us. That was fine by me, screw the squares if they don’t want to be with us. Luke and me were a tribe of two, or we were until he grew hair on his nut sack and discovered that being a bad boy got more girls to lift their skirts than driving a BMW or living in a mansion up on the hill. So he deserted me for gash and I waited alone for the mystery to take hold of me. At fourteen I lost my cherry to a thirty five year old pro who had gentlemen callers as she called them into her bungalow across the brown patch of grass from our front door. Right after I came I had two contradictory ideas, what was all the talk about? Getting laid wasn’t all that big a deal, in fact it was kinda nasty. At the same moment I heard a much deeper voice saying when do we get to do this again? I spent the whole summer doing odd jobs around her place, working on the barter system.

  My brother left when I was sixteen. He just packed up his ’56 Ford and moved to Texas. He said it was where our roots were, our old man had been a Texan, and I guess that was all the excuse Luke needed to put three thousand miles between himself and our childhood. Whatever his reasons were, he left me alone with the care and feeding of the monster. I still haven’t forgiven him for that. She was getting crazier by the day, bouncing between DT’s and liver meltdown. Her skin had taken on a greenish yellow color and a dull shine like wax. Her hearing was shot so she always had the Bible Boosters on full blast overdrive.

  I stood it for two long months, believing Luke would roll up with a beer in one hand and a Texas cheerleader in the other, and our life would go back to the dull crazy I had always known. But he didn’t, so I lifted his birth certificate and an old driver’s license and enlisted in the Marines.

  Six weeks later, I graduated boot and was shipped out to Lebanon. President Ronny that actor fuck sent us a televised message. He was proud of us upholding the Marine tradition of protecting the innocent. Our mission as he outlined it was to show the world our support of the legit Lebanese government. How that translated into a battle plan was a bit sketchy. They posted some bullshit called the ROE, rules of engagement, we were never to carry a round chambered in our guns, we were only to fire if in direct and imminent danger. Under no circumstances were we to give chase or fire upon the enemy unless they were firing on us. It was pure political bullshit and we knew it.

  WELCOME TO THE ROOT, was chalked in tall uneven letters on the landing strip where our transport chopper landed. The Root, Beirut, or what was left of it stretched out before us, the night sky lit up with green tracers and the city rocked from mortar fire.

  Me and a twelve-man squad were assigned to checkpoint 79. It was down in an East Beirut ghetto we called Hooterville. The first time a sniper fired on us I about shit myself. Rounds burst open our sandbags and we dove for cover. Most of the time they were bad enough shots so that it became more of an irritant than any big danger.

  I had only been in country about a week when the Shiite militia drove a truckload of explosive into the American embassy killing 17 Americans. The press blamed the marine guard, but what the hell were they supposed to have done? By the time they saw what was happening and chambered a round it was too late.

  That’s when we decided to change the rules of engagement. The Gunny had us rake a 50 caliber machine-gun across
an apartment building where ten or so snipers had been harassing us. The big bullets ripped glass, curtains, plaster, wall studs, whatever came into their line of fire. Me and two other sharpshooters lay on a rooftop across from the building. When the Muslim fighters came running out into the street, Gunny blew a whistle. We rose up and tore the surprised sons of bitches to shreds. Blood and bone chips and pieces of cloth flew in all directions. One of the militia spun trying to aim up at us, through my scope I could see the stupid shock on his face as my bullets ripped him apart.

  There was movement at the front door, more were coming out, I sprayed them down before I noticed it was a young mother chasing her panicked child out of the building. Miraculously the child was not hit, but his mother hadn’t been so lucky. A line of my bullets had stitched across her chest. She fell face first down the stone steps, her arm outstretched, reaching for her son.

  Afterwards the Gunny said it couldn’t have been helped, it was the cunt’s fault for running into a fire zone. That night I discovered peace in a glass. Six boilermakers and I couldn’t even remember what I was crying about.

  Our misguided adventure in that red shit pile came to an end after a suicide bomber drove his truck into a barracks killing 270 sleeping marines. One flash of light followed by a pillar of fire and every friend I had in the corps was dead. 270 KIA in one day, the only thing even close was Iwo Jima. It was a few too many body bags for Prez Ronny and his cronies to stomach so we got our orders to ship home. It would be a lie to say we left that place any worse than we found it, but we sure didn’t do it any good.

  Back stateside, my head was filled with the smell of burnt Marines and the face of a dead woman. My C.O. got word that my mother was in the hospital, he offered me hardship leave to go to her. I told him it must have been a mistake, I was an orphan.

  I spent my off hours in the base club drowning my head in beer and whiskey. To their credit the officers understood that what we had been through over there had taken its toll, but even they had their limits. My almost constant drinking and general insanity led to a medical discharge. I didn’t fight it, I was sick and tired of their rules eating into my drinking time.