by Ray Garton
“Oh, no. No plane, no jet.”
“How about a boat? Your parents gotta fuckin’ yacht, or somethin’?”
“A yacht and a fishing boat. Why?”
“That’s always a great fuckin’ way to get ridda more than one at a time.”
“What? You mean, like...sinking it? Blowing it up?”
“Why the fuck not? Yachts explode all the time.”
“They do? Where do yachts explode all the time?”
“Ever watch TV, dude? Cable? C’mon, man, that kinda shit’s goin’ on alla fuckin’ time.”
“Uh, what reason would a yacht have for exploding in real life? I mean, a yacht that’s not on TV.”
“Fuckin’ explosives, dude! That’s what I do, I go plant the explosives in the fuckin’ yacht, they go out on the fuckin’ yacht, the fuckin’ yacht blows into a billion fuckin’ pieces. Problem solved.”
“Yeah, I can see how that would work,” Adam said with a nod. Thought, This asshole would blow himself up in his car.
“No connections, no traces. I’m thinkin’ in your case, it’s the way to go.”
“You think?”
“From what little I fuckin’ know about it.”
“How long you been doing this kind of work, Monty?”
“‘Bout eight months now.”
This is a nightmare, Adam thought as he asked, “Get much business?”
“Oh, yeah, fuck yeah. And I do it all. Shoot ’em, blow ’em up. Fuck, I even strangled one. Ha! But that’s a long fuckin’ story. I’ll tell ya sometime.”
“Well, like I said, Rain and I haven’t decided how we want to handle this. Or if we even want to do it.”
“That last part’s bullshit!” Rain shouted from the backseat.
Adam ignored her. “I hope you don’t mind, but I think it’ll be a while before we can—”
“Take the next left,” Monty said, pointing.
After turning, Adam said, “I mean, we can’t make a commitment to anything right now.”
“A fuckin’ commitment? The fuck’re you talking about, we gettin’ married? Take this right up here.”
“I mean, we haven’t decided anything yet. So we won’t be needing your—”
“Here, to the left, this is the fuckin’ place, dude.”
“—services.”
On the roof of a liquor store on the left corner, a giant neon clown held a bouquet of flashing balloons. At the clown’s impossibly long feet, a bright sign read, CIRCUS LIQUORS. Adam parked just outside the door.
“Good, it’s not fuckin’ busy,” Monty said. He turned to Adam and flashed an Opie smile. “C’mon in, dude. Leave the engine on.”
“Huh? Oh, no, I’ll wait out—”
“C’mon!” Monty shouted as he got out.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Adam complained. He looked over his shoulder. Rain’s head bobbed on Carter’s lap, while he slumped in the seat. Carter saw him through heavy-lidded eyes and shrugged helplessly.
“Fuck, you comin’?” Monty called.
“Gettin’ close,” Carter replied with a lazy laugh.
Adam got out of the car, threw the door closed and jumped onto the sidewalk that surrounded the store. Monty fumbled with a floppy piece of orange cloth.
“Figured I better bring one for me ’cause the cops know my face,” Monty said, putting his hand on Adam’s back. He pulled the glass door open and pushed Adam into the store, saying, “But Rainy says you’re fuckin’ clean as shit.”
“Clean? What kind of clea—” Adam turned as Monty slipped an orange ski mask over his head with one hand and pulled a large black-and-silver gun from his right coat pocket with the other.
“C’mon, bro.”
“What?” Adam felt light-headed, close to passing out. Everything slowed, including his heart. Even the rap beat coming from the Lexus outside slowed to a lazy thump.
Not really, Adam thought. Nothing’s really slowing down. This is just my nervous system preparing me to die.
Monty turned, aimed his gun at the closest front corner above them, where a black surveillance camera looked down over the entire store. Fired two quick shots before the camera popped into two pieces and dangled by a cord.
Adam’s muscles tensed more with each shot. His body frozen, inside he was a terrified, screaming pit of chaotic flashing images, familiar voices gibbering over one another. Voices from his past—mostly his mother’s, talking over itself repeatedly—warning him about the Wrong Crowd and Bad Neighborhoods and the Danger of Guns. Not a single voice mentioned anything at all about what to do to keep from getting his guts blown out during a liquor store holdup.
“Back up, back up!” Monty shouted at the middle-aged Korean man behind the counter. “Turn the fuck around and face the cigars! Put your fuckin’ hands up on the racks! Do it, motherfucker!” Satisfied with the man’s position, Monty looked back and said, “Hey, come hold this motherfucker for me.”
Adam stood frozen about eight feet behind Monty, near the door. Couldn’t even blink as he stared at Monty’s gun, pointed at the back of the man’s head. Monty was saying something, but Adam was underwater, at the bottom of the pool, Monty’s voice an indecipherable groan making its way down to him.
“Goddamnit, I said come hold this guy, you wanna get us fuckin’ killed?”
Adam broke the surface of the water and suddenly everything fell back into place. Sounds and smells icily clear, time moving at its normal speed again.
“Oh, shit,” Monty said. He still held his gun on the cashier as he looked over his shoulder at Adam with wide-eyed realization. “Shit, man, Rainy said you was cool! And you don’t got any fuckin’ metal? That’s fucked up, dude!” He stuffed his left hand into his coat pocket, glaring. Not so much like Opie Taylor anymore.
The Korean man began his turn, knees bending, head ducking. Monty took another gun from the coat pocket, and flung it at Adam. It spun through the air, a deadly boomerang, growing larger fast in Adam’s eyes. He swiped at it with both hands, but it slammed into his chest and knocked him back against the door. He caught it there, awkwardly, nearly dropped it once.
“Hey, fuckmeat!” Monty shouted at the cashier. He fired his gun, but too late. The man had disappeared beneath the counter.
Adam was still holding the gun between two palms like a mentally handicapped child when he heard the chuh-chunk of a shotgun being racked. The man popped up from behind the counter, leveled the sawed-off barrel at Monty and fired.
I should go now, Adam thought.
The sound of the shotgun lingered heavily in the air as Monty dropped to the floor, and suddenly blood was spattered everywhere. On the floor, the counter, the racks and shelves. On Adam’s shoes. It dribbled warmly down the back of his right hand. Something about the way Monty had hit the floor convinced Adam he was dead. He pushed back and opened the door.
The Korean man shouted furiously in his native tongue as he turned the shotgun on Adam.
FOURTEEN
The night had been cool and friendly a while ago. Now it was hot, smelly, like a sick dog’s breath. But the heat came off Adam’s body, and what he smelled was his own fear.
Carter and Rain watched him from the backseat, their faces ghosts in the window. Rain looked tense, eyes hidden behind her sunglasses. Carter seemed about to shoot out of his skin like a screaming Independence Day rocket. He was shouting something. Adam heard his muffled voice, saw his mouth moving, but the words were garbled by the closed window, drowned by the ringing in his ears. He tried to run, but had little control over his body. With the gun in his right hand, his arms flailed, rubber legs wobbled and staggered.
Another explosion from inside the liquor store shattered glass. Bits of it rained down on Adam as he stepped off the sidewalk and ducked around the car, groped for the door handle. Rain climbed into the front and opened it for him.
“—the gun, drop the gun, drop the fuckin’ gun, Adam, drop it!” Carter shouted as Adam flopped behind the wheel.
&nbs
p; Rain sounded firm and calm as she said, “Give the gun to me.”
Their voices were gnats flying around Adam’s ears. He let Rain take the gun and put the car in reverse.
The door of the liquor store was now a metal frame with glass fangs. The Korean man kicked it open, lunged out of the store. Leveled the sawed-off shotgun at the Lexus.
Adam stomped on the accelerator and the car lurched backward. He shifted again, floored it, sent the car shooting across the L-shaped parking lot.
The shotgun fired. Dinging and thumping sounds made all three of them jump inside the Lexus. The windshield and driver’s side windows were instantly pitted with white gouges.
Adam drove away from the street from which he had entered the parking lot, toward the street that crossed it. The shotgun was quiet for the moment, things looked like they might be okay. Adam did not wait to check for traffic, just shot into the street. Got into the right lane, slowed down a little to avoid the attention of the police.
“Where am I?” he said. Then again, louder.
“What do you mean, where are you?” Rain said.
Carter screamed, “You’re on the wrong side of the fucking street!”
It appeared to be true. Headlights sped toward him. Things were not okay. He was driving the wrong way on a four-lane street divided by a strip of concrete the height and width of a sidewalk. Cars all around him honked their horns. Up ahead, four headlights stared him down. In the rearview mirror, two cars were coming up on the other side of the divider. In the backseat, Carter’s voice rose in pitch as he yammered senselessly.
Adam slowed, let the two cars on his right pass on as the two ahead of him drew closer, closer. Tires squealed and both approaching cars wobbled. Adam could see the driver in the car directly ahead of him. A large black woman, pounding a round fist on her steering wheel, angry mouth working. Getting closer.
With a final glance in the rearview, Adam turned the wheel sharply and sent the car over the concrete divider. He and Rain and Carter left their seats a few times during the turbulence, and their heads hit the ceiling of the car.
A muffled crash sounded just behind them and Adam looked in the rearview again. Another crash, and another. Some cars—at least three, from what he could tell—had piled up in the oncoming lane he had just exited.
“Son of a bitch,” Adam groaned. He felt like vomiting.
“You better slow down,” Rain said. She was still calm. And surprisingly calming, as well. She turned off the radio and Adam’s ears rang louder.
In the backseat, Carter sounded like a fired-up, tongue-speaking televangelist in the act of healing a fat man in a wheelchair of his gout. Occasionally, a word or two in English would tumble out amid the gibberish, usually something obscene.
Rain turned around in her seat and shouted, “Will you shut the fuck up!” She faced Adam, curled her legs beneath her and leaned toward him. “Okay, what happened? What the fuck happened in there?”
Clutching the steering wheel with shaking, white-knuckled hands, Adam glanced at her repeatedly. Tried to gauge her, figure out if his ears had been damaged by all the gunfire and rap, or if she actually had snapped at him as if everything were his fault. As if he owed her an explanation. “What are you saying?” he asked, voice hoarse. “Are you saying that I did something wrong here? Me? Back there?”
“No, I’m asking what happened. Turn right up here and get on the freeway. What went wrong?”
“What went wrong? That demonic Ron Howard pulled a fucking gun and robbed the store! That’s what went wrong! He’s your friend, so maybe you’d know...does he do that kind of shit often?”
“He was testing you.”
“Testing me? For what, sphincter control?”
“Well, he was gonna...y’know, work with us. But Monty doesn’t work with anyone he doesn’t trust. So he does that. Y’know, to see if he can trust ’em. If he can work with ’em. Never had any fuckin’ problem before, far as I know.”
“And he never will again because he’s all over the TV Guides back there.”
Once on the freeway, Adam began to relax, but he did not like it. He told himself he should do anything but relax, should go straight to the police and explain everything. If he did not and they tracked him down, they wouldn’t believe a word he said. He saw no other sane choice. He was about to voice his decision when something Rain had said finally registered.
“You knew about this?” he asked.
“Yeah. I figured there’d be no problem.”
“You knew he was taking me in there to rob that store and you didn’t see a problem?”
“There was no fuckin’ problem before.” Rain said. “You couldn’t just stand there and let him do it?”
“He threw a gun at me, you demented twat! He thought I had my own metal, he said. Because you said I was cool as shit.”
“I wanted him to do it for us, Goddamnit! I figured you could make it through one little pussy liquor-store hold-up!”
“I can’t believe you kept the gun,” Carter said in the backseat. “It’s, it’s like you’ve never seen a movie in your life. You kept the gun!”
Rain turned to him. “Would you quit whining, Carter! Adam didn’t keep the fuckin’ gun, I did.”
“What the hell do you need with another gun?” Adam said. “Starting a collection?”
Rain leaned very close to Adam and whispered, “It’s for us. We’ll talk about it later.” She licked his ear and a quiet, honey-thick laugh rolled up from deep inside her.
Adam asked, “Has anyone ever told you...that you’re evil?” He did not smile.
She giggled. “Yeah, I get that all the time.” Her shoes were in the backseat where she had shed them and she wiggled her toes against Adam’s thigh.
“Well, they’re wrong,” he said, then shouted, “Evil is afraid of you. Evil hides from you. You make Evil shit its pants.” Adam’s chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. “I’m going to the police.”
Rain and Carter both cried, “What?”
“I think I should go back to the nearest police station. Was that liquor store in Compton?”
Rain pulled her feet away from him and slapped his arm hard. “Are you fuckin’ crazy, whatta you think’s gonna happen if you do that?”
“If they trace that robbery back to me, I’m doomed,” Adam said. Fear made his voice catch at times. “It won’t matter what I say, they won’t listen, and because of my dad it’ll be big news, another Hollywood scandal. This way, if I tell the police the truth now, maybe we can prevent all that and it won’t get out.”
“Won’t get out?” Carter asked, his voice’s pitch shooting so high, he sounded like a frightened Bryant Gumbel. “Did you get shot in the head? You know better than that, listen to yourself! You go to the cops or get caught later, either way you’re going to jail, and either way it’s going to get out.”
“He’s right,” Rain said. “Except for that part about getting caught later, that’s bullshit. You got away with it. So quit the fuckin’ dramatics, Hollywood Boy. You didn’t get caught. You’re free and clear, so no more shit about goin’ to the—”
“How am I free and clear? I was in the store, there were cameras and—”
“Ever been arrested?” she asked.
“What?”
“Have you ever been arrested?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you don’t have a record, you don’t have a mug shot for some witness to identify.”
“Were there witnesses?” Adam asked.
“I didn’t see any,” Carter said. “But I wasn’t looking for them.”
Rain continued impatiently. “Look, Adam, they don’t know shit about you, can’t you get that through your fuckin’ head? You’re clean, and you got outta there alive, that means you got away with it. And even if you did have a fuckin’ record, it wouldn’t matter, because it’s just a pissy little liquor-store shooting. You think they give a shit about those? Investigating liquor-store shootings in Compton
’s like investigating every single fucking car alarm that goes off in Westwood. They don’t give a fuck about you, they don’t know you from...well, shit, from Adam. But they will if you go to them and start confessin’ your fuckin’ sins. They’ll arrest your ass, then you will have a record. And a mugshot. You’ll be seriously fucked and—”
“No, it doesn’t feel right,” Adam said. He shook his head spastically. “Not telling them just doesn’t feel right.”
Carter leaned forward between the seats. “C’mon, man, you know she’s right. They got the only guy who did any shooting. And he’s probably got a rap sheet longer than Milton Berle’s dick! You don’t exist as far as they’re concerned, you’re not in the system.”
“Let’s just find a place where we can have some coffee and a fuckin’ doughnut, or somethin’,” Rain said.
Carter put a hand on Adam’s right shoulder and squeezed. “Going to the cops is the wrong thing to do, Adam, you know that. Right?”
“I...I don’t know, Carter.”
“Let’s just go chill out at Denny’s for a while, okay?”
FIFTEEN
Denny’s on Sunset Boulevard was busy at all hours, and was no different that night. Innocuous music played from invisible speakers. Muted voices, clattering plates, and the cry of an infant moved through the music.
Adam and Rain sat across from Carter in a window booth, with Adam next to the window. Jaw resting on the knuckles of his interlocked hands, he stared through the glass at the nighttime activity on the Strip. Winos and junkies, some talking to themselves, arguing with memories. Prostitutes of both sexes, some indeterminate, being browsed by anonymous shoppers driving slowly by.
Adam had a cup of coffee in front of him. Carter and Rain were splitting a grilled cheese sandwich and onion rings. Three untouched glasses of ice water perspired on the table. Carter absently thumbed through L.A. Express, a pulpy sex weekly he’d picked up from a vending box outside.
Adam spoke in an unsteady whisper. “If he hadn’t stopped to throw me that gun, he probably wouldn’t have gotten shot.” He turned to Rain, angry. “I can’t believe you knew about it and didn’t say anything. I can’t believe you just let me walk into that.”
