by Daniel Jeudy
Coniglio examined the polish on her toes and decided a fresh color was long overdue. She’d been painting her nails, shaving her legs, and moisturizing her skin for what seemed like forever; pampering remained a part of her daily routine.
The bathtub was calling. Perhaps she would light a scented candle and fix herself another cup of tea while soaking to the voice of Carlotta Chadwick. She still intended to go for a stroll down by the lake and wanted to get back in time to watch the boys deliver their gruesome news to the citizens of Los Angeles.
Seven
The Frolic Room was Addison’s favorite place to go whenever he found himself caught up inside a shitty day. Filled with yesteryear charm, the small, no-frills venue maintained a well-stocked bar and the drink prices never fluctuated. There were portraits of movie stars on the walls and a collection of Al Hirschfeld sketches, while the jukebox was an archive of contemporary music. A diverse beer selection was available, and the cigarette machine proved handy on those occasions when he sat on a chair for longer than expected. The dive bar was situated next door to the Pantages Theatre, like a speakeasy on prime real estate. Addison had been frequenting the joint regularly for thirty years.
Collins was expecting them to be standing by his side when the cameras rolled out in the evening, which meant they couldn’t go getting loaded on whiskey. A cop might have gotten away with such things in the past; however, the times had changed. Management could no longer ignore errant conduct due to the scrutiny that came with holding a public office.
City Hall was a ruthless beast, and a good community profile was tantamount to career longevity. Besides, most people carried a camera in their back pocket nowadays, increasing the likelihood of police misconduct making the evening news. But a few drinks wouldn’t hurt, and a pause might help improve his partner’s hangdog attitude.
Addison heard the familiar cry of squeaking hinges when Jed swung the door open, bringing a blast of cold air onto their faces. A lingering smell of sickness floated above the fumes of hard liquor; a hundred bottles fashioned a glittering glass wall beneath the space lighting. The joint was empty except for two Latino hoods hunched at the counter.
Jed led the way to the bar, where a young blonde with jade green eyes came gliding over to serve them. Addison ordered two double whiskeys, impressed by the speed in which she returned with their drinks. The girl offered an exaggerated smile when asking for his money before focusing on her fingernails.
The hoods nearby had started cussing under their breath after catching a glimpse of Addison’s badge when he opened his wallet. Dressed in tank tops with baggy pants, they flaunted gang-related ink over their arms. Gold chains hung loosely around their necks, and white scars protruded through their buzz cuts. Addison considered whether they might become a problem as he leaned against the bar.
The blonde was making eyes at his partner, so he coughed to get her attention. She took his cash with a sigh before he left two dollars on the plate as a courtesy.
Addison glanced down the bar at the two men again. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t give a damn, but he was mildly comforted by the fact they were beside him rather than Jed.
“How are ya doin’, kid?”
“Don’t sweat it, Ad; I’m all peachy.”
“Well, you ain’t been saying a whole lot today.”
“I’m just thinking is all.”
“Seems you been doin’ a bit of that.”
Jed’s attention returned to his glass. “Yeah, I guess. It just feels like everything is stuck on repeat, you know what I mean? Same old bullshit over and again.”
Addison studied him while he endeavored to form a picture of what he might look like after another ten years on the job. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
They both stood there for a bit.
“How’d your date go last night?” Jed asked.
“Like they always do, buddy.”
“I wasn’t aware you went on enough of them to complain about, hotshot.”
Addison chuckled. “Well, I guess it depends on who you’re comparing me with.”
“Don’t be so humble, man. I’m bettin’ the ladies love that Texan cowboy shit you bring to the table. It’d be like stepping out with Elvis and Eastwood at the very same time.”
Addison snickered again, only louder. “Elvis? I don’t think so. How about you? You still seeing that little waitress, Rosie, who you told me about?”
“I am. Rosie’s a cool chick who doesn’t ask any stupid questions, and I don’t get the impression she wants to hang out with me ’cause I’m a cop. She’s good company, too.”
“Good company, hey? Nothing beats good company. An easygoing woman can be a hard thing to find.” Addison could feel the hatred coming off the two thugs beside him and turned around to pick out a position on the back wall. “How about we go and sit over there so we can speak in private,” he suggested casually.
“Sure thing,” Jed replied, already making his way toward the dark end of the room.
Addison ordered two more whiskeys, pointing to the back corner.
He’d taken just a few steps when something hit the back of his skull. Addison watched a quarter rattle across the floor, and he turned to face the assholes at the bar, but they continued pulling on their beers with ridiculous straight-ahead gazes.
His legs jammed when his father’s face flashed in his mind, and he needed to push the image away. If he didn’t, he’d likely march across the room, and once things kicked off, he probably wouldn’t be able to stop. Addison never considered himself much of a fighter, but that didn’t mean he shied away from a contest if the circumstances required it. Almost every scrap he’d been involved in was a consequence of something like what just transpired. He moved on with justifiable anger and sat down to focus on his partner.
“Who stole your drink?” Jed teased.
“What?”
“You look like someone stepped up to take a piss inside your glass. You should see your face, man. Are we drinking here or what?”
Addison squeezed out a smile. “I’m a different person, one moment to the next partner. You ought to know that by now.” His tone lacked lightheartedness.
“You know what you need?” Jed asked in all seriousness.
“That’s a tough one.”
“What you need is to come to Santa Monica and catch a wave with me at dawn. When the swell crashes over your body, it makes you feel brand new. At least for a while, anyway.”
Addison raised his eyebrows. “Take a look at me. I have a hard enough time putting one foot in front of the other. How do you think I’d go riding the water? I’ve got enough things I suck at already.”
Jed was about to respond when the blonde appeared like mist to place their glasses on the table. Addison slipped her a ten and told her to keep the change.
“Hey,” Jed objected. “It’s my round.”
“You can grab the next one. It’ll save me having to walk across to the bar.”
The girl tried her best smile on again, and Addison laughed silently within, thinking how his partner made him feel invisible at times.
“Can I get you guys anything else?” she asked.
“No, we’re good,” Addison assured her, watching as she gave Jed a final lingering glance before dragging herself back behind the bar.
The kid was California personified, and he came with a loose aura that could sometimes be mistaken for apathy. His youth had been spent on the beach, where school was an afterthought to the surf culture and party lifestyle. He was raised by his single mom, an airy-fairy take-everything-as-it-comes woman who invested her years chasing after men. She loved him dearly despite her flaws, and her cop brother had always been close at hand whenever her son needed to be pulled into line.
Jed’s uncle persuaded him to apply for a place at Elysian Park Academy, where he graduated top of his class. The kid sometimes played possum with the other detectives in the division, but his brain was what got him noticed in the first place. He was encoura
ged to sit for the detective exam after impressing the sergeant with his street smarts and instinct.
Much of Jed’s sparkle had dissolved over the past six months. It wasn’t easy staying switched on in the killing game. There used to be an old sergeant at the Parker Center who had this one phrase he would repeat to the rookies who arrived ready to save the world—You cocksuckers better get used to finishing second, and you best be doing it quick.
As far as policing went, no truer words could be spoken, but it was the utter contempt that gnawed away at Addison more than anything. The disrespect at getting a quarter thrown at the back of his head while he was trying to have a quiet drink.
“Anything jumping out at you on this case yet?” He asked.
“Nothing besides the obvious.”
“Which is?”
“We need to pray the sick bastard screws up soon. Either that or we catch ourselves a lucky break, and somebody calls the hotline with game-changing intel.”
Addison inhaled the fumes of his whiskey. “We’ll get him,” he answered evenly.
“How the fuck does anybody’s life get to a point where they start cutting young women into pieces for pleasure? Remember that piece-of-shit kid killer, Marshall Brooks, who’d come down from Fresno whenever he was in the mood?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget that piece of filth.”
“The Brooks investigation is hands down the worst case I’ve worked on. His commitment to killing those boys was almost unprecedented. Now, I don’t know why, but this kinda has a similar stink about it. You feeling me?”
“Yeah. I know where you’re coming from.”
“Then there’s the speed between the bodies and the way he’s calling them in. It’s almost as if he needs them to be discovered right away. Like the cocksucker’s impatient for the world to see his work. Even the inverted Christian cross is muddying the waters. If something doesn’t turn up soon, we’re gonna end up with a lot of pretty corpses on our hands.”
Addison considered his glass while he reflected. The kid was right. Aside from the occultic symbology, there wasn’t much else for them to go off.
Jed swallowed his drink and raised his glass in the air. “You want another one?”‘
“One more, then we should probably head back.”
“One more it is, then,” Jed answered, setting off toward the bar.
Addison believed a few more shots might result in them staying in the joint to commit career suicide. Everybody knew they’d missed out on the vigilante case due to his weakness for hard liquor, so he didn’t want to screw things up here.
The explosive sound of splintering glass crashed in his ears, and he looked across to see Jed advancing toward the assholes at the end of the bar.
“What the fuck did you say, dickhead?” Jed raged, arms extended on either side of his body as he stared down the challenge.
It took a moment for instinct to kick in before Addison jumped out of his chair, moving fast for a middle-aged drunk with bad knees. He watched the first hood lunge at his partner with outstretched arms as Jed pulled him in hard, smashing his forehead down onto the prick’s nose. The tough dropped like lumber, his face shattered, groaning incoherently and barely conscious. Blondie was hollering from behind the bar, and Addison realized how Jed would be brawling security if this had kicked off later in the evening.
Thug number two snatched a beer bottle and moved forward.
Jed ducked beneath the sideways arc of his intended blow, driving hard with his shoulder to spear him into the ground, where he unloaded a flurry of punches. When Addison arrived a moment later, he hooked an arm around the kid’s neck and dragged him toward the door. His partner thrashed about in a fury.
“You hear what these fuckin’ assholes said to me?” Jed roared.
Addison hadn’t heard but could still feel the dull throb from where the quarter had connected with his melon. He continued dragging his partner away from the scene.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” he reasoned as they scrambled for the exit.
Addison was pissed with himself; he knew about Jed’s hot temper and should never have allowed him anywhere near those sons of bitches. They burst through the door into the sweltering afternoon heat, making tracks away from his favorite taproom. “Are you trying to get suspended or what?”
“Fucked if I know,” Jed declared, storming up the sidewalk to his ride.
Eight
Narek lowered his window to check the side mirror for anyone who might be using the street behind them. He’d been thinking of a dancer from the boss’s titty bar in a bid to alleviate his boredom, but the memory of her cunt created an ache in his balls that only left him frustrated. Narek parked beneath the canopy of a eucalypt while they waited for Jamie Callahan to arrive home. The air inside the stolen Chrysler felt like a breath from hell as it coiled around his body like invisible fire.
Bedros appeared aggrieved by the conditions as if the humidity were a personal slur sent down on them by the hand of God. He sat slumped in the passenger seat, stuffing food down his gob while he fanned his face with a stick magazine. His rusted-on expression of hatred affirmed how he’d be ready for action when Callahan returned.
His partner was the cruelest individual Narek had ever encountered: his forthright approach embraced his stoneheartedness. The big bastard always inflicted more brutality than was needed, and when they whacked someone, his eyes smiled. Violence was an indispensable commodity in organized crime; being feared was the best security a criminal could have. Bedros had proven himself to be reliable, and he never needed much encouragement to make a person scream. He discussed murder and rape in terms of endearment, and it didn’t bother him any if a target happened to be a woman.
“How much does this Agarka owe?” Bedros asked through a mouthful of grease.
“Seventy grand,” Narek replied, disgusted.
“We’ll have some fun, then?” Bedros roared, spraying harissa onto the windshield.
“Oh yeah, we’ll have some fun, all right.”
Killing for cash could be an absolute blast. The severity of the craft got the heart racing, and the variables meant things never became dull. Davit often wanted people killed in terrible ways; it just depended on what they’d done wrong and who they’d done it to.
The rim job they were waiting on had made an error in judgment, and even though everyone could make a poor choice on occasion, rarely would the consequences of their stupidity be so considerable. Jamie Callahan had managed to fuck shit up for himself after approaching them to coordinate his wife’s abduction.
It was a hasty piece of Irish cocksuckery aimed at getting her wealthy folks to pay a fee for their daughter’s safe return. The boss agreed to terms with the dipshit when he promised half the payment or fifty grand if things went belly-up.
The lady’s family had come to the party with the dough, so they released the bitch as soon as the money changed hands. It should have been an easy earn for everyone involved, but the slippery cocksucker had been lying about the size of the payoff from the very start. Mrs. Callahan’s abduction generated a lot of media attention upon her return, which meant the actual ransom amount eventually came out in the wash.
Davit used some Mexicans to snatch the woman and transport her to a safe house at Redondo Beach. The Chicanos were promised twenty large for their effort on the condition she was not interfered with in any way. Vato criminals were mostly scumbags in nature and similar to dogs when it came to fucking—renowned for putting their dicks into anything with a heartbeat. The reason Davit ventured outside of Armenian Power was to ensure there’d be a sheet of separation between himself and the authorities who came sniffing about afterward.
He often recruited hardened felons prepared to luck out for a smaller slice of the pie if a job contained a high element of risk. A citizen might question how he could do this, but it was all super fuckin’ easy. The Armenian Mafia was notorious for their unchecked savagery, with hundred
s of soldiers to call upon whenever a threat needed to be enforced. Their influence didn’t end on the street either. Davit kept a chief judge who could arrange for corrupt officials to preside over a hearing, provide intel on the prosecution’s evidence, or obtain a witness’s address.
Everything came down to the dollar because even the most upstanding residents would usually look the other way for a price. America had been hoodwinked into believing their legal system was beyond reproach. Still, the OJ Simpson murder trial displayed the kind of exploitation that could be purchased in the good old US of A.
Bedros wriggled while he attempted to get his shirt unstuck from the front seat. “Has this Gyot paid Davit any money?” he asked.
“What do you think? Of course he paid. He just didn’t pay enough. The boss even gave him extra time to come up with what’s owed, but the douchebag never got the message.”
“Not very smart, this Irishman.”
“No, brother, not very smart at all.”
The thing was, seventy grand’s a fair chunk of change, and it’s never good business to squeeze the trigger on someone without first trying to recoup what was owed. Callahan had gotten the chance to make things straight by handing over the fifty he’d shorted them, plus another twenty on the top as a gesture of goodwill. Narek believed he would have moved heaven itself if he’d understood what would happen if he didn’t.
Instead, he fed the boss a bullshit story about the press getting the ransom wrong. How he ever imagined they’d accept such a lame excuse was anyone’s guess. The stupid bastard would have been better off hiding behind a sheet of clear glass in the middle of the fucking day. Still, Davit gave him one final opportunity to square up, but the dumb cocksucker just threw it right back in his face.
