Romeo's Hammer

by James Scott Bell

  He was a poet, that Joey.

  Lacking coffee, I wasn’t too worried about that last five percent. But it did give me time to think out loud.

  Brooklyn Christie had been missing for at least two weeks. When she talked to her father she seemed agitated about something, hyped up about finding “the way of life.”

  That would be exciting all right. We’ve been looking for it for six thousand years.

  In the brief time I’d known Brooklyn Christie, she struck me as someone highly vulnerable, even suggestible. She was like the Amaryllis—blooming with vibrant color but fading fast if not given the right soil. Such flowers are prone to getting picked.

  The phrase “way of life” sounded pseudo-spiritual. Which suggested anything from Scientology to a start-up guru. Could have been a megachurch, of which L.A. has many. Or even a multi-level marketing scheme.

  That little bit of information from Brooklyn wasn’t going to get me anywhere. She could have been on a retreat. Wasn’t there some guy you had pay big bucks in order to fly to an island and bask in his effluvia for a week or two? Which people actually did? Lots of people?

  Brooklyn might have been ripe for just such a plucking.

  But it was a shot in the dark.

  And was her disappearance—or not wishing to communicate—connected to her condition on the beach that day? Maybe, or the two could have been totally unrelated and random. Like so many things that make life into life and not the outline for a perfectly plotted script.

  What was more promising was the triangle made up of Lindsay DeSalvo, Jon-Scott Morrow, and Brooklyn.

  Lindsay had a role in an upcoming Western starring Jon-Scott Morrow.

  Lindsay was Brooklyn’s friend.

  Making it likely that the house Brooklyn had stumbled out of, poisoned, was that of Wild Bill Hickok.

  I’d have to ride my horse on over there again and give the aging lawman another chance to talk.

  A bright-red Corvette convertible passed me. The kid at the wheel looked about fifteen. He wore shades and a black cap, backwards, white kid gangsta style. He was probably a product of the L.A. Unified School system.

  And the ’Vette was probably a present from mommy and daddy.

  Or maybe he was a rock star.

  Either way, he pulled up in front of Rocky’s house and got out.

  THROUGH BINOCULARS I watched the kid, whose stick legs stuck out of long black flop shorts that went to mid calf, walk up to the door and knock. He looked up once and made a quasi-gang sign. Either that or his hand cramped. There was obviously a camera looking down at him.

  Then the door opened and there was Spartacus, in white T and black jeans and bare feet.

  He gave the kid some slap-doodled handshake. They jawed, then the kid went inside.

  Door closed.

  Two minutes later, door opened.

  Kid came walking out fast, his thug pants flapping in the breeze.

  I started my car and drove by, noting a bulge in his right pocket as he got into his Corvette.

  Half a block down, I parked at the curb and got out.

  The hot red car was making its way down the street at a good clip.

  I started to walk across the street.

  Tire squeal.

  The kid leaned on the horn.

  I put my hands up as if to say sorry.

  And hit my chest as if to say my bad.

  He honked again.

  I jumped up on the hood.

  Then over the windshield.

  A little twist and I was in the passenger seat.

  “Whoa whoa whoa!” the kid said.

  His phone was sitting in a cup holder on the console. I grabbed it.

  “Whoa!”

  “Ease over to the curb,” I said.

  “What’re you doin’, man?”

  “You want your phone back?’

  “Yeah!”

  “You want to live?”

  His chin went down a floor.

  “Do you want these nice wheels not to go up in flames?”

  A quavering voice said, “Don’t kill me, man. Take my money.”

  “I don’t want your money,” I said. “And I don’t want to smell your fear. You’re going to do one thing for me, and then I’m going to let you go, never to see you again.”

  The small body of the white gangster-in-training shook like a horse’s leg trying to get rid of a fly.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER the kid stood at Rocky’s front door. He was still shaking. But he knew the deal. It had taken me one full minute to explain it to him, about thirty seconds for his questions, another thirty for clarification, and a minute to calm him down and keep him from crying.

  Now as I stood just off the doorway, out of reach of the camera, I held in my left fist a roll of quarters that I keep in Spinoza’s glove compartment for such times as this. In my right I held the kid’s phone.

  I nodded at the kid.

  He knocked on the door.

  A couple of seconds of silence, then the door whipped open.

  “Whattaya want?” Rocky said. “Don’t you keep coming—”

  That was all he was able to mouth. I whipped around and plowed my reinforced left fist straight into the ersatz gladiator’s snout.

  He dropped like a bag of cement.

  “Here,” I said, handing the trembling guy his phone. He snatched it and ran away.

  I stepped over Rocky’s inert body.

  The inside was strewn with items and a man mess of open pizza boxes, beer bottles, a table with white powder on it, and a wall-size TV that was on mute but had some pornographic movie in mid-scene.

  And there in a corner, pretty as you please, was C Dog’s guitar.

  Moving fast, I went for it, then saw something move on my right.

  He was in boxers, that was all. I recognized him immediately.

  Rifle Boy. My would-be assassin.

  His eyes got pie size.

  He turned and moved back from whence he came.

  I knew he was going for a weapon.

  Which made my adrenaline-laced pursuit all the quicker.

  It was a bedroom.

  Rifle Boy was leaning over a table, reaching for something. He was just turning with a nine-mil in his hand when I gave his face the left fist treatment.

  He crumpled over the table, knocking a lamp to the floor.

  That’s when I heard the first scream.

  IN IRISH FOLKLORE, the Banshee is a spirit, in the form of a woman, who wails with a chilling screech outside a home where someone is about to die. The Banshee’s wail chills the blood and pierces the heart.

  My blood went into the freezer.

  Another scream, and from the bed a girl came at me. She wasn’t dressed in rags, nor was she gray of hair and red of eyes like that Celtic spook. She was young. My mind triggered the thought fifteen or sixteen years old. She wore a Philadelphia Eagles T-shirt and black panties.

  She did have claws. They were outstretched as she jumped me.

  My cage instincts were in working order. I leaned back as the first swipe of her nails scratched air.

  Her screams melted into obscenities even a Banshee would find over-the-top.

  Then she came at me again, arms wild, and I was sure she was high. Her tangle of nut-brown hair fumed like sea spray as she shook her head wildly. I got hold of her wrist and gave her a takedown. It didn’t take much. She must have weighed all of a hundred pounds.

  “You killed him!” she said, the first rational expression of the encounter.

  “He’s not dead,” I said.

  She told me what I could do to myself.

  “Be quiet,” I said, bending her wrist a little more.

  She yelped.

  “Do what I say and you won’t get hurt,” I said.

  She told me another thing I could do to myself.

  Then I heard a moaning from the front room.

  “Come along,” I said as I lifted her and controlled her out to where I’d laid Rocky
on the floor.

  He was groaning and moving.

  “Rocky!” the girl shouted. “Get up!”

  Rocky shook his head.

  I held the girl’s arm with my right hand.

  Rocky started to rise.

  With my left fist of quarters, I put him to sleep again.

  The girl gasped. Then started crying.

  A voice from the bedroom cursed.

  So I controlled her back to the bedroom, just as Rifle Boy was getting up.

  I put him to sleep, too.

  I was beginning to feel like one of those guys with the spinning plates, having to go back and froth, back and forth.

  The girl found her voice again and screamed.

  Time. For this, I did not have it.

  I lifted the sputtering sprite into the air and threw her down on top of the bed sheet.

  WITHIN FIVE SECONDS I had her wrapped up in the sheet like a Christmas present … if the present was a live puma. I tied the corners like a Viking testing his strength after too much grog. Then I lifted the whole thing and put it in the closet and shut the door.

  I went back to the living room, retrieved C Dog’s guitar, and walked out of the house, closing the door gently behind me.

  Down the block to my car. I put C’s guitar in the trunk, then took out my phone and punched 911.

  A dispatcher answered and I said, “Listen carefully.” I gave her the address of Rocky’s house, speaking slowly. Then added, “There is an underage girl who has been sexually molested and is tied up and in a closet. There are two men, bloody, with illegal weapons. So have guns drawn.”

  “Sir, I need a name and phone. Your number is not—”

  “You have to move fast. Be sure to search the trunk of the BMW. Got that? And the garage. An illegal marijuana grow. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir. But if you’ll please give me your—”

  “Sexually abused teenager,” I said. “Hurry.”

  And clicked off.

  I drove to the next big street, Vanowen, and parked. Looked at the time.

  Three minutes elapsed until I heard the first siren.

  I saw the flashing lights ten seconds later. The black-and-white passed me and hung a left.

  Two minutes later, another screaming cop car roared by.

  My work here was done.

  I headed back to the beach.

  I WENT TO see C Dog.

  I let myself in through his front screen door.

  He was not expecting me. At least that’s what I got from as his expression exploded into the look of the nabbed druggie. Next to him on a beanbag chair was a guy trying hard to look swarthy and bad. Your average thug works on his appearance as diligently as a prom queen. Since most of their act is about seeking respect, they have to put on a mask of practiced menace.

  Such people bore the snot out of me. Try talking to them about anything but women and football and see how far you get.

  One more thing. Sitting on a small table, on some tin foil, was a glass pipe and a lighter. The glass pipe was cloudy. The room had a faint, burned plastic odor.

  “Hey man!” C Dog said with a big grin.

  “Having a party, C?” I said.

  “Who is this guy?” the bad man said. He wore jeans and an Oakland Raiders jersey.

  “This’s my bud,” C Dog said. “Name’s Mike. Mike, this is Chas.”

  “’Sup,” Chas said.

  “You bring the meth?” I said.

  “Want some?”

  C Dog started laughing. But I had the distinct feeling he didn’t know what he was laughing at.

  “I’ve got your guitar,” I said.

  C sat up like he’d been stung. “No way! Where is it?”

  “You broke our agreement,” I said.

  His face went blank. “You gotta be kiddin’ me, man. You got my guitar and you won’t give it to me?”

  “That’s right. Agreements are conditional. You have not fulfilled your condition. You have broken your word.”

  “But it’s my property!”

  “No, it’s my property. Collateral on our agreement.”

  “Give the man his ax, man,” Chas said.

  “You are not a party to the agreement,” I said. “Why don’t you go outside for a while and talk to the sky?”

  “I don’t gotta do nothin’.”

  “Maybe I should talk to him alone,” C Dog said to Chas.

  “You gonna take this in your own house, man?”

  “And another thing,” I said. “You don’t bring any more of your product over here. Not for sale, not for using. That clear?”

  The dealer’s face flushed. He struggled to his feet out of the bean bag. He was a pretty big guy. He tried to look like a guy who’d been in a lot of fights.

  Next thing I knew, the guy pulled a knife. A switchblade.

  Flick.

  Six-inch blade.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Put that away, man,” C Dog said.

  “Guy’s not gonna to talk to me that way,” Chas said. “Guy’s gonna take off.”

  “Put the knife away, son,” I said.

  “You go get the man’s guitar and come back with it,” he said. “All you’re gonna do tonight.”

  “I’m going to give you the chance to put the knife away and walk out of here. You don’t and I’m going to take it away from you and carve a large letter A on your left butt cheek. Did you ever read The Scarlet Letter? Let me answer that for you. No.”

  He frowned as if my English was his third language.

  “Well, this A in your left butt cheek will not be for adultery. It is the first letter of what you are.”

  “Put the stick away, man,” C Dog said.

  “Nah,” Chas said. “I want him to try. Thinks he can, he’s gonna get cut.”

  “Never take out a knife when you’re high,” I said.

  “Come get it,” Chas said.

  “Don’t, man!” C Dog said, but it was impossible to know who he was talking to.

  I took a step toward Chas.

  He pushed out with the knife, pulled it back.

  “This is not going to end well,” I said.

  “This my house!” C Dog said.

  “Shut up,” Chas said.

  “You don’t tell a man to shut up in his own house,” I said. “You agree, don’t you, C?”

  I wanted C Dog to keep talking, and Chas to keep reacting. The best timing against a guy with knife is when he gets distracted, even a little. You watch his eyes and wait for the flinch.

  “That’s right!” C Dog said. “My house!”

  Chas said. “Shut up!”

  It was the up that did it. Chas put so much into it his whole body jerked.

  I pounced.

  He was holding the knife at gut level. I brought my right hand to his inner wrist and my left to the backside of his hand. This was simultaneous, like I was giving one big clap.

  The move snaps the hand inward and the fingers open automatically.

  The knife hit the floor.

  Chas was too shocked for words. I put him in a hammer lock and forced him to the floor, face down.

  I picked up the knife and straddled his back, facing his feet. I used the knife to slice the seat of his jeans.

  “Hey, man!” C Dog said.

  I put the knife down on the small of Chas’s back and used my hands to rip open the jeans.

  I picked up the knife and pressed the point into his left butt cheek.

  Chas grunted into the floor.

  “That’s the spot where the A is gonna go,” I said.

  “Get off me!” Chas said.

  I reversed my position so I was sitting facing his head. I leaned over and said, “You don’t come back to the Cove, ever. You do, and I will carve that A on one cheek and the Gettysburg Address on the other. We clear?”

  He bared his teeth but nothing came out.

  “Tell me we’re clear,” I said. “Or I begin with Fourscore and seven years ago.”r />
  “All right, man!” he said.

  I got up, folded the knife and put it in my pocket.

  “Get out,” I said.

  Chas the dealer got to his feet, gathering as much manhood as he had left—only enough to fill a thimble—and stormed out, jeans flapping.

  I looked at C Dog. He had this awestruck look on his face.

  He said, “You are one bad—”

  “I don’t want to hear another word out of you,” I said. “We’re done, you and me.”

  “Hey—”

  I put up my hand. “Not. Another. Word. Unless you want what your friend got.”

  I pushed the screen door the rest of the way off and set it aside on the porch.

  When I was about fifty feet away from C Dog’s place, I heard his pitiful voice say, “But what about my guitar, man?”

  THE NEXT DAY I went to see a man named Zane Donahue. He was the guy Jimmy Sarducci had set me up with. The guy who knew a guy who knew a guy …

  He lived in a house off San Vicente on the Westside. Gated driveway. When I drove up to the gate and pressed the buzzer, the gate opened and a woman who pumped iron and popped roids came out. No one looks this way naturally.

  She wore a camouflage tank top and dark-blue bike pants. Her meaty thighs gave the Spandex a hearty stretch. Her arms were substantial and ripped. She wore her blonde hair in a pony tail. The expression on her face was a cross between an annoyed waitress and Chucky. But the meanest thing on her was a weapon. She wore it in a holster like a cop. It was bulky so I figured Taser.

  Muscles approached my window. She waited for me to speak. If her face had not been laced with anabolics, it would have been pretty.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Donahue,” I said.

  “Your name Romeo?” she said in a throaty voice that seemed itself to be lifting weights.

  “Yes.”

  “ID?”

  I showed her my very nice-looking fake driver’s license I got some time ago from a street hustler. She shoved it back to me. Then opened the gate wide so I could drive in. I half expected Cerberus to be on a leash behind her.

  There was a big circular driveway in front of a massive, English Tudor house. I parked Spinoza in front of the archway with a big wooden door and a thick knocker. I told myself not to repeat any lines from Young Frankenstein in front of the muscular gatekeeper, who came up and opened the door.