FIREFIGHT
by JACK STEELE
Copyright © 2010 Jack Steele
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
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Chapter 1
Our bad is the enemy of our good,
Our good is the enemy of our best,
Our best is the enemy of our God.
The goat-fuck began when the godfather sent me a message asking me to go see his nephew Fatso about a job. I almost refused. I'd never met Fatso, but from what I'd heard, he was a real pig. On the other hand, his money was as green as anybody's.
Fatso's lair was on the 35th floor of the Chase Bank Building. When I arrived, I was ushered into the boardroom, where my view of South Central Los Angeles was somewhat spoiled by the early morning fog so common to Los Angeles in June, and also by the cigar I'd taken from Fatso's humidor, creating a little indoor smog of my own.
The big door opened and Joey "Fatso" Politzio walked in. I'm sure he was used to my surprised stare. I myself am a very large man, but he dwarfed me. I figured his freshly killed carcass would initially scale out at around 425 pounds, most of it bacon, maybe 300 pounds with the guts removed and all blood and fluids drained off.
"Nasturtium," he said. What kind of name is that?"
I took my time before answering while I looked him over. He was fairly young, and already bald. There was an earring--a diamond stud--and a lot of diamond rings. Even through the cigar smoke, his scent was pervasive, an acrid funereal musk. I figured it was probably something a woman picked out for him, lest he smell like a deceased manatee in bed.
"Everybody has a name," I said. "I had to get rid of my old one. A Nasturtium is a flower. When you crush the leaves, they give off a nasty stink."
He frowned. “What the fuck you doing smoking in here? That’s a five-hundred dollar cigar. Hand rolled in Cuba. Marinated over two years in French cognac from the time of Louis Fourteen.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “The quality isn’t being wasted on me. But if you want me to put it out, I will--in your eye.”
He started to stare me down, thought better of it, sat down at the head of the table, and looked me over.
"What’s that?” he said, pointing to the large hand-tooled Indian crafted leather bag I always wore at my side, the strap secure across my chest. “Are you some kind of fairy who carries a purse? What’s in it?”
“Guns, knives, and grenades.”
“Are you kidding me? How’d you get that thing through the metal detectors downstairs? How did you get past my men?"
"That's what I do," I said. "Your security doesn't even know I'm here. I made it all the way to your secretary without setting off a single alarm."
"Open the bag and let me see.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re joking, right? If I want to see what's in there, what are you going to do?”
“I’ll rip your eyes out so you can’t look in my bag.”
"Okay," he said. "You're a tough guy. My uncle said as much when he recommended you."
"Which is the only reason I'm here."
“Nasturtium, let's cut the crap. I need some work done."
“And that is?” I said.
He nodded. “Somebody took something from me. I want it back.”
“What's my cut?”
“Depends.”
“You don’t need me for your hatchet man,” I said. “You’ve got your own people. You can find out who stole from you the usual way. Torture your suspects one by one until somebody innocent confesses just to get the torture over with.”
“You’re not funny, Nasturtium. Not a bit. And I do need you. I can’t trust my own people. Especially the ones closest to me.”
“By that you mean you fear the problem is located among someone close to you, someone high up in the organization.”
He smiled and I noted with some disgust he’d had his tongue pierced and ornamented with a pearl, the better to do what with and to whom I could only imagine.
“I need an outsider. That’s why I thought of giving you a try. My Uncle Ernesto says you are a stone cold killer. That you handle things quickly and efficiently, military style. If the investigation gets messy, I need someone who knows how to handle himself. You’re a man who likes to kill people. My Uncle Ernie told me about some of the crap you and your Navy Seal buddies pulled in Vietnam. Blowing up boats full of little kids and old people.”
“It was Panama. Bush sent me down there to light up Noriega's ass. I blew up a barge full of Cuban nationals. The problem was, a U.S. congressman's kid was with them. That cost me 10 years in the castle at Leavenworth. That's why I'm here now, looking for work.”
“A military hero who fell from grace," he said. "There's a certain poetry in that."
He was wrong. There was no poetry. Only the bitterness of betrayal by my country. I used to be an ordinary guy. I grew up on the farm with Granny and I made her proud. I got baptized in the river and accepted Jesus. I went to the Senior Prom on the arm of the prettiest girl. I worked at McDonald's. I joined the Navy without being asked. I spilled my blood defending my country. Then the politicians came for me. My reward was 10 years in a box. Now I was a man without a country and without a name. The pretty girl married somebody else. Granny was off to heaven, and I hadn't seen Jesus in years.
Fatso turned his back to me. "I probably shouldn't tell you this," he said. "My uncle said he thinks of you almost as the son he never had. Last weekend, he told me point blank that he prefers your company to mine. Imagine that? The old man prefers an outsider to that of his own flesh and blood.”
I wondered at this. A few years ago, I had been in the wrong place at the right time and saved the godfather's life. After that, I had spent many an afternoon sitting around the old man’s ranchette in Beverly Hills, telling lies and playing chess, but it hardly qualified me for adoption. Aside from the occasional odd job he threw my way, Ernesto Catalano had kept me at a respectful distance from his family and their business. There had been no invitations to parties or family gatherings. No introductions to other members of his gang.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Your uncle and I don’t exactly exchange presents at Christmas.”
He winked at me. The wink made him appear amiable, as though we shared a special secret. He winked again, and I wondered if I should wink back. Then I realized the truth. Joey Politzio had a nervous tic, which had fooled me into thinking he was friendly. I wondered how many of his enemies in times past had watched him wink at them while he cut their fingers and toes off with a pipe cutter.
“Fill me in,” I said.
“A scientist named Niles Edom got himself killed at The Clean Room. He had something for me, and somebody killed him and took it. I need it back yesterday.”
“Heroin?” I said, referring to the typical operation where the stuff in bulk form was stepped on with cornstarch, the workers performing this chore stark naked in a 'clean room' in order that they should not steal the merchandise. By scientist, Joey probably meant his chemist.
“Naw, this ain’t about drugs.”
I nodded. That left only one other possibility for a clean room, but an odd one--a high tech enterprise involving a microchip production facility, a component of which would be a dust-free compartment where workers dressed in bio-containment quality garb to perform critical microchip design functions.
The fact that such a facility had come under the arm of the sleaziest people on the planet almost frightened even me. Mobsters messing with technology?
“Joey, I didn’t know you boys had turned from drugs and white slavery into the high tech sector.”
He snorted. “The clean room isn’t a high tech lab--The Clean Room is the name of an upscale bar up in Ridgecrest that we run for the China Lake weapons people. A lot of Cal tech guys go up there for the week and they need someplace to drink because there's not much to do around there in the high desert unless you like tortoises. Somebody murdered Niles Edom in the men's room."
"Niles Edom? Sounds like the name of a cheese."
"He was a super brain who went to Cal Tech when he was seven years old and never left. As I said, the brain had a package for me. Whoever killed him took the package.”
"Why was he working with you?"
"We filmed him with one of our girls at a trick pad we run right near the bar. Niles was a family man."
“There’s going to be some Federal involvement sooner or later. When a guy like Niles Edom goes missing, it usually brings in the big boys.”
Politzio shrugged. “The Feds are hanging around up there. They know the man’s missing--but they aren’t as yet aware the man is dead.”
I sighed. And they never would be. Niles Edom had just gone on the roster of permanently missing persons. “I suppose it would be pointless to ask where the body of Niles Edom is.”
He waved his chubby hand across the foggy expanse of South Central. The body was most likely by now dissolved in a barrel of toxic chemicals, said barrel tossed into the ocean beyond the San Pedro breakwater, where the leaking chemicals from the barrel were killing crabs at a brutal pace.
It was going to be one of those days. Common sense told me to walk away, but the truth is, I was flat broke, and whenever did common sense win out over the need to eat and enjoy clothing and shelter?
“I need carte blanche.”
“You have it. Do whatever you have to do. Find my package and return it to me. It’s that simple.”
“When do I start?”
“You start now. With my sister.”
“Your sister?”
“I told you I think it may be someone close to me. She works for me."
“Doing what?”
“Stuff.”
"And you're certain she ripped you off?"
"Yes," he said. "But I can't touch her. She's Uncle Ernesto's pet. I don't have to tell you what would happen to me if I crossed either one of them. That's why I need you to do it. If things go wrong, I can tell Ernesto that you went rogue on me. I have deniability."
“I can't touch her either," I said. "If Uncle Ernie finds out I hassled his niece he'll come after me. I'd have to leave the country."
“Uncle Ernie has throat cancer,” he replied. "He's got six months, tops. When he goes, I'll be the new godfather. After you finish with my sister, you can take a vacation and come back then."
I ran the numbers in my head. Deal or no deal? Six months in French Polynesia by the pool, and nights on a private balcony with hot and cold running women.
“Deal," I said. "The investigation’ll cost you a hundred grand. Fifty up front. And a lot more when I return from my vacation and you have complete control over the family's pursestrings. This is my last job. When I get back I'm going to retire.”
“Done,” he said, heading for the door. "After you meet with my sister, come to my office and I'll have your money ready. I'll send her in. Her name is Madonna. But be careful. She's a total slut."
It surprised me he agreed so quickly. Of course I knew why. After I got the thing back, he’d kill me to save face with the godfather and save the entire hundred grand. If he could.
I was hard to kill. It was a risk I decided to take.
Chapter 2
After a few minutes Madonna Politzio walked in, sat down next to me, placed her small purse on the table and crossed her slim quick legs. Not a bad looker. A forty-something with medium length, pulled-back ash blonde hair and no wedding ring.
She had on a red business suit designed to cling in just the right places to ensure whatever charms she possessed were the immediate focus of any male scrutiny during business hours. But I was working and not subject to such distractions. Accordingly, I kept my scrutiny in check. I did, however, sniff her.
"Nasturtium?" she said. Her voice was a rich contralto and worked its way through the many syllables with angelic overtones.
"Interesting smell," I said. I sniffed again.
"That's Clive Christian No. 1, she replied. "Your nose isn't qualified to smell it."
"Expensive?"
"If you consider $6,000 an ounce expensive."
"It smells slightly of dry leaves, or maybe cannabis sativa."
Madonna was just one more woman I’d never have. My size and number of visible scars scared most of them away. Maybe if I had a great personality I could have done a little better. The personality disappeared on my first day in The Castle at Leavenworth.
I was a realist. There was no chance for me with Madonna Politzio. It would make my job that much easier.
“What do you want?” she said. “My brother said you had something important to talk to me about.”
“I need your help. Your brother said he lost something and thinks maybe you can help me get it back.”
Her eyes widened. The silence between us was palpable, like something you could spread on toast.
“I'll help in any way I can, of course,” Madonna said. "But we can't talk here."
"Fair enough," I said. "Will you join me for coffee?"
Always take the victim to a secondary location.
She gave me the deliberate once over, sucking in her cheeks a micro-fraction in an expression I couldn’t read. Either distaste or desire. Could have gone either way.
“My, you’re big,” she said, pooching out her lips and emphasizing the word while staring at my crotch.
Her words seemed to activate the universe. Full sunshine burst through the morning haze, and another perfect day in Los Angeles began to roll forth over its complacent, weather-coddled citizenry. I wasn't sure I wanted to hassle her.
Madonna reached into her purse and pulled out a business card upon which she scribbled her home address.
“Meet me here in an hour.”
I examined the address. Someplace in Venice Beach.
“It’s the last alley before the strand. You enter off Lincoln and make your way in the direction of the Marina waterway about a mile. It’s the one on the right, about three houses before the waterway. It has shingles and a freshly painted bright red garage door.”
"See you soon," I said.
“One other thing. What’s your real name?”
“John McDougal,” I said.
"You know we're going to have sex the minute you arrive, John," she said.
I stopped breathing for a second. "Is that right?"
“That's right. And I'm not going to call you John. I'm going to call you Nasty.”
Right then and there I knew Fatso was right. She was the thief. She was going to use sex to scramble my brain so I wouldn't take it away from her. It would probably work. She left me standing there, and after my head cleared I went back to see Fatso to collect my money.
Chapter 3
Fatso's office had a massive cherrywood sideboard full of booze and junk food in his spacious corner office with a dynamite view of the western half of the city, the half where the money was. The man wasn’t checking out the view, preferring instead the pleasant pastime of sipping a tall scotch rocks in between stuffing himself with mouthfuls of potato chips from a large silver bowl. His mastication process was noisy and disgusting, in that he obviously found it difficult to eat and breathe at the same time.
To reach him, I had to pick my way through a lot of big leather furniture and cherrywood tables full of stuff similar to Ming vases. There were little horse statues and ceramic eggs on silver stands along with a lot of other useless clutter, including a blackened, dried up lump of something in a glass box I couldn’t identify. Whatever it was, it must have been special. It had it’s own pedestal where it sat by the door, a tight ceiling spot focused upon it.
“Before I go any farther, Fatso, exactly what was in the package you lost?”
“How the hell do I know? Niles Edom contacted me and started babbling about making materials and products from the bottom-up. Said he’d invented a super weapon.”
“A super weapon? Bottom up?”
“That is, by building them up from atoms and molecules. He discovered something about solar energy and gravity. He said that Einstein didn't realize that gravity was the first element, not the fourth or some shit like that. He said he’d found out what makes the sun burn, what the force was in nature which binds atoms together. He called it the rotational energy of gravity. At which point he took his knowledge and invented a product he wanted to sell to whichever government would pay the most for it."
"So what the hell did he invent?"
Fatso shrugged. "Hey, I’m only the broker. I didn’t understand a word that came out of his mouth. I don’t know rotational energy unless it has something to do with hookers.”
Fatso was lying. He knew it and I knew it. He knew damn well what the thing was.
"How will I recognize it when I see it?"
“Whatever it was, he said it was something small. No bigger than a pea. Something a certain Middle Eastern bandito was willing to pay a nice price for. You know the guy, he’s the camel jockey who wears the checked turban. He looks like Ringo Starr. What’s-his-name.”
“Arafat? But he's dead."
“Yeh, but now there is a new, young Arafat. Looks just like the old one. Probably not his real name. He's a shadow warrior, I think. It was him, we were told, who would love to get his hands on whatever it was Edom had in his pocket that night. We made a few inquiries to the right people and whatever it was, it was something he was willing to pay in the neighborhood of a couple of hundred million dollars for.”
“A couple of hundred million!”
“I kid you not. Imagine that. All that money for a little pea. Probably wants to kill Jews with it.”
Now I knew what it was. A planet killer. A weapon of mass destruction, based on a radical new design. Something that fiddled with the underpinnings of the universe. Something new that should never have been built, that would instantly render impotent and usurp all the former superpowers around the globe. It was the size of a pea. It was the omega, the end. It was loose on the playing field.
I should have politely excused myself and run for my life, but there was no way to ignore the challenge. If even a particle of what Politzio said was true, somebody needed to stand up and fight. And that somebody, for whatever reason the fates had for choosing such things, was me. If what he said was true, I would not be returning it to Joey, either. As for returning it to my country? The bastards who'd betrayed me? For now, it wasn't clear what I would do. I'd have to play it by ear. Perhaps I'd keep it. I could imagine calling up the Congressman who'd sent me to Leavenworth. Hi, remember me? I'm the new chief weapons officer for the entire planet.
Of course, Joey was not stupid. There was doubtless a contingency plan in place to handle my betrayal. Again, it would be a matter of playing it by ear. By the end of the day, we'd find out who the new boss was going to be.
"In order to get a handle on this thing," I said, "I need a car and I need a hundred grand up front.”
“We agreed on fifty grand.”
“That was before I found out what the package was. A simple six month vacation may not be enough.”
“You can drive the company Mercedes. It’s downstairs in the garage. I’ll call down and have it waiting for you. It’s the big one, a white SL-600 convertible--probably a lot more power than you’re used to, seeing as how you normally travel by Greyhound bus, or by foot. You can use the car with my blessing, but I can’t give you a hundred grand up front.”
“Listen up, Fatso, you’re going to pay me now or I’m going to shove a Ming vase up your ass.”
Politzio winked. Reaching into his desk, he withdrew a couple of fat envelopes and tossed them over. I didn’t bother counting it.
“Okay, Fatso. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going get the device back, and you're going to pay me one million dollars.”
“One million dollars?”
“A fee of one-half of one percent of your take from young Arafat. Not unreasonable for assisting you in recovering the micro-pea filled with death.”
“You outmaneuvered me, Nasturtium. I respect that.”
"Is Arafat aware the item is missing?"
"Sort of," he said.
"Sort of?"
"When we didn't deliver it on time, he started making noises."
"Are his people here in town?"
"Maybe a few," he admitted. "And some others, I think."
"Why are you and your sister out in the open? Why aren't you behind the barricades?"
"It's not time for brute force yet," he said. "Everybody still wants to negotiate. They don't know if I have it or my sister has it or where we have it stashed or what. If they guess wrong, they lose."
"That's why you hired me to get it from her. Because they don't know who I am. And because there is no telling how many other people are out there looking for it."
"You can come and go unnoticed. I can't."
“Sounds fair to me. We have a deal.”
“One million it is for the info leading to the pea. Drink?”
“Drink.”
He poured us each a scotch and we sipped and sealed the bargain.
“Tell me something before I take off, Fatso,” I said. “What's really going on between you and your sister? Why did she cross you?”
With a huge grunting noise, he managed to rise from his chair. “It's a sibling rivalry thing. I think she's trying to be the next godfather.”
“Say again? A lady Godfather?”
“I told you she's a slut. She got to Uncle Ernie. Made his brain soft by sleeping with him. She looks harmless, but she's powerful, sexually.”
“She sleeps with the old man?”
“Used to, but not anymore. Although ever since Viagra came on the market, I’m sure he’s thinking about doing it again. But she did when she was a teenager. She destroyed his brains with her sexual genius. If I went to him and told him what she'd done, he wouldn't believe me. The woman is a sexual Pandora. Her box should have never been opened.”
“You hate your sister.”
“That's where you're wrong. Family is family. I don’t hate my sister. I loathe her. It’s different.”
I got up and headed for the door, but my eye caught once again on the spot-lit blob encased inside the glass box beside the door. Politzio caught the movement.
“Nasturtium, you’re wondering what’s in that glass box.”
“Yes.”
“When Madonna and I were little kids, somebody snuffed our parents on Christmas Eve. That thing inside the box is the heart of the man who murdered my mother and father. Uncle Ernie ripped it out of the man’s chest personally, right after he had a couple of his good old fashioned Sicilian boys stomp the man almost to death in his wine cellar. They brought in a surgeon who hooked up the guy to a bypass machine, and an anesthesiologist who numbed the man completely so he wouldn’t die from shock, and then they taped his eyes open. The surgeon removed his heart. They kept the murderer conscious so he could see his beating heart in Uncle Ernie’s hand before he croaked.”
“Uncle Ernie certainly knows what to give a kid for Christmas.”
“There’s not as much left of the heart as there used to be, even though it's preserved in a vacuum. Every Christmas morning, I grind up a small piece and consume it with a glass of heavily spiked eggnog.”
“God.”
“Uncle Ernie suggested the practice to me. At first I was repelled by it, but then I understood the higher wisdom attached.”
I drained the last of my scotch and headed for the door, taking one last look at the heart inside the glass.
Chapter 4
On my way down the elevator, I planned my first move, which was to have sex with Madonna. She was going to use me and I her. Accordingly, I headed out Wilshire towards the beach and soon found myself about a mile south of the Santa Monica pier in an alley lined on both sides with three-story condominiums, a place smelling of fried fish and motor oil. Madonna Politzio’s alley.
Yeh, that’s right. Maybe I wasn’t exactly her type, but then again, who was I to argue with the forces that make and shake our planet? I didn’t invent the male-female connection. In truth, I was afraid of her. She was sick, as sexually sick as a woman could be. Undoubtedly had endured years of abuse from her Uncle Ernie. I had endured years of torture and abuse courtesy of the Federal Government. We were a match made in heaven.
It was clear to me that my tryst with Madonna would be done between silk sheets, with candlelight and crystal and heavy doses of the Clive Christian No. 1 perfume. It would be days and nights of timeless, sweating abandon, where the urge to experience it would dominate until only the urge itself had any meaning. Then I would recover the device and that would be that.
Her place was clearly marked for this particular wayward fool to find--it was the one with the bright red garage door. Right where she said it would be, a block shy of the Marina waterway, a place of light and space and ocean. A nice neat tri-level, brown shingled, which smelled of fresh paint and money. I pulled in and went around front, threading my way through too many pots of hydrangeas and up the brick steps, my manhood already vibrating from the gut-level adrenaline inside of me.
So much for my best-laid plans. Madonna was inside, but she couldn’t come to the door. She was too busy being killed by two well-dressed men.
I could see them through the big plate glass window of her living room. One had her by the throat and the other by the arm. There was a black plastic garbage bag over her head, but I knew it was her because she still had on the red dress. They didn’t see me watching, busy as they were hustling her away from public view towards the back.
I tried the door. It opened and I went in. There was a third well-dressed guy on a cell phone in a tiny kitchen alcove off to my left. I remember thinking his hands were too soft and his fingernails too shiny. He opened his mouth wide in surprise at my appearance. His lips were moving but no sounds were coming out. If I had to guess, I’d have to say he probably wanted to warn his buddies that a guy the size of a bus with a Ka-Bar extreme fighting knife gripped in each giant fist was coming his way. Maybe he was going to ask his friends why they’d forgotten to lock the front door in such a dangerous neighborhood. Some guys freeze up when they’re scared, and some guys yell and jump around. This one was a freezer.
He couldn’t seem to decide what to do with his cell phone. That’s understandable. It’s hard to break free of cyberspace when a real emergency crops up. He wasn’t a fighter, and my Ka-Bar blade of laser-cut D2 steel wasn’t necessary to disconnect him from his somewhat fragile grasp on a life which could best be described as one Granny McDougal would have warned him against living. A double strike blow to both temples at once with the butts of the knives sent one more soul heading for the blackness of darkness while his body became food for the nearest hungry worm.
I found the other two well-dressed guys in the garage. They didn’t see me right away, being somewhat intent on their victim. Apparently, the smaller of the two was going to do the job on Madonna with a box cutter while the bigger one held her arms pinned back so she couldn’t remove the black plastic bag.
They finally saw me, and it was clear by their postures they weren’t ready to head for the blackness of darkness just yet. They weren’t freezers, but they were bunched too close together to do much jumping and yelling before I closed the gap. The blades became necessary, and accordingly I employed them, the razor sharp steel doing exactly what its makers intended. About three seconds later it was all over.
There hadn’t been much noise, but there was a lot of blood, mostly from the one with the box cutter, who’d lunged wildly at a critical instant and lost a huge chunk of tracheal material in the process. I was sorry about the smaller man's sudden move. I’d intended not to kill, but merely paralyze by angling the blade through the correct cervical vertebra, hoping to leave his speech processes intact enough to find out the who, what, when, where, and why of his sorry existence before I sent him packing to the blackness of darkness with his other two buddies.
Chapter 5
Looking back, I think I should have stopped for some flowers and a bottle of wine on my way over. I hadn’t and my thoughtlessness saved her life. Maybe that’s enough. But still, I felt bad for the way our first meeting had gone. It was my first visit to Madonna’s house and I’d wanted to make a good impression. I hadn’t had time to wipe my feet on her red horsehair doormat, or drop gracious remarks about how nice her place looked, especially the big red leather couch.
She was very much into red. But all wasn’t lost. Fortunately, the messiest part of this took place in the garage. At least I hadn’t ruined the lady’s carpets, or broken any of the red lacquered knickknacks she kept in her nice cherrywood hutch in the living room. Of course, had the job needed to be done in the living room, it might have been a different story. These things can never be fully predictable, as I have over the years learned. Which was why I liked sneaking up on my enemies with the Ka-Bars. It’s their quiet, humble versatility that appeals to me, I think. There’s just nothing like them for reliable, silent, jam-free killing.
It was as close to a poignant moment as I ever came when I pulled the black plastic bag off Madonna’s head.
“Nasty,” she said, when she was finally through wheezing and gasping for air. Then saw the two men. “Oh God. They’re dead. And the smell. It’s terrible. They’ve both defecated. There was a third man with them.”
“Was,” I said.
“You killed three men? You never even spoke to them. Just ... killed them. They didn’t even cry out. Just died.”
“Sometimes the ketchup comes straight out of the bottle and sometimes you have to pound it out. This was one of those times it came straight out.”
“You saved my life,” she finally said. “You’re evil. I can see that clearly now. Those men were evil, but you were even more so. I owe my life to you. Because of your great ability to do evil, I’m still alive.”
“Nowadays, in my opinion,” I said, “people need to do more than stay alive. They need to have a reasonable quality of life.”
I sat her down in the living room, the mood spoiled slightly by the guy on the kitchen floor. There was a sideboard with decanted whiskey, and heavy glass tumblers. I poured us both a generous amount of the stuff. Anti-adrenalin therapy. We sipped a bit; a little color returned to her cheeks. I pulled out an emergency Big Mac from my bag. It was cold, but it tasted good. And who knew when I’d eat again?
“How can you eat that disgusting thing at a time like this?”
“I like Big Macs. It’s all part of my master plan to eat as many of them as I can before the Lord calls me to the Final Judgment. I’m sure they don’t have them in Hell.”
“I’m shaking, Nasty.”
“It’ll stop after awhile," I said.
“They were waiting for me when I got home. They must have found a way to get past my alarm system.”
“Bull. You came home and let them in. You had something for them.”
“What--” She looked at me and tried to feign surprise.
“Madonna, Joey sent me because he knows you murdered Niles Edom and stole the technology. You took the nano-pea.”
“I did what?”
“Madonna. You will not play games with me. You murdered Niles Edom in The Clean Room and took the nanotechnology. Apparently, the pea was small enough to swallow, because that’s what you did. You swallowed it. The handoff just now went sour. The agents for the transaction decided to simply take the stuff from you without a payoff, so you swallowed the merchandise.”
“You know nothing.”
I shouldn’t have slapped her. Not after what she’d been through. I still had too much adrenalin in my system and hit her with more force than I’d intended. The blow sent her flying clean off the couch.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I killed Edom. But it was an accident. I gave him the money he asked for, but then he got cute and said he was going to the Chinese with his invention. I pepper sprayed him. Apparently, he had an allergic reaction. His face swelled up like a balloon in seconds and he stopped breathing. There was nothing I could do.”
“Okay. You’re working alone. Or are you lying? Tell me. Are you in cahoots with anybody else, or was this a solo gig?”
“I’m sick of being under Joey’s thumb. So when I found out about my brother’s connection to Edom and young Arafat, I decided to make a move on my own and intercept the merchandise. I wanted to prove myself to the family. You know, poke my head through the old glass ceiling, or whatever.”
“So it’s true. About you being the next female version of the Godfather.”
Her face contorted into something less than human. “They owe me! Uncle Ernie came to my room every night since I was ten years old! You stupid idiot! Don’t you get it! Joey isn’t my brother! He’s my sssson!” She hissed it out.
I now understood what happened in the Garden of Eden. The snake hissed. But Eve, violated by his deception, her wrath fully activated, hissed even louder and scared the snake into the far reaches of outer space.
“Fatso is your son. But he thinks you’re his sister.”
“He has no clue. And I’ve no maternal feelings for him.”
“But he remembers the two of you finding your parents dead.”
“He remembers nothing. We told him that story to explain away why he has no parents.”
“Then whose heart is that he eats every Christmas Eve? The heart he keeps in the glass box in his office?”
“Who knows? He got the damn thing from Ernie. The heart probably belonged to some junkie producer who skimmed Ernie’s take on some Hollywood production budget. Enough of this! My plan has fallen apart. But now you’re here. Don’t you see the hand of fate at work? I'm going to keep the weapon. It's the ultimate extortion. If you help me, I'll cut you in and you'll be rich.”
“What's to stop me from keeping it myself?”
“You need me. A thing like this has to have somebody with half a brain to protect it.”
I ignored the insult. “What about Joey?”
“He'll get over it in time. Besides, he wouldn’t kill his own mother.”
“Correction. He doesn't know you're his mother. He thinks you’re his sister. And he would kill you. He’d dry your heart and grind it into his eggnog every Christmas.”
Her eyes displayed a certainty it could never happen. That’s when I stopped kidding myself. This was no cute kitten. This was a full grown lioness. Perhaps it was Joey who should be scared. I know I was.
“How did you know I swallowed the technology?”
“I know you swallowed it, because the guy with the box cutter wasn’t going for your throat. He was getting ready to disembowel you to retrieve the merchandise from wherever it’s currently at in your digestive organs. I’ve seen the technique before, one time in Laos, when they cut open a Cambodian mule to get to his stash of opium. They use a box cutter because it doesn’t damage the merchandise. It’s a more delicate cut, like that of a scalpel.”
“These guys weren’t from Laos,” she said.
“No. I’d say they were Armenian. The guy in the kitchen was wearing a huge gold crucifix. And they look Armenian, at least from their eyes and general facial characteristics. Armenians here in the country illegally by way of Hong Kong, if I had to guess.”
“You’re guess is correct. But what makes you say Hong Kong?”
“Their suits. They’re all hand tailored. But it’s just a guess.”
“You’re a freak. But your guess is correct. They were Armenian Mafia. I brought them for protection from Joey. They went Judas on me just now. I have no protection. I'm completely exposed.”
"You have me," I said.
"Do I?"
I stood up and helped her off the floor. Outside the perfect day was turning sour. The fog was blowing back in. Inside, the place was beginning to stink from the guy in the kitchen, who’d likewise done something nasty in his pants. Something with a lot of garlic.
“We need to get out of here. The others will wonder what’s going on.”
“The others?”
I nodded. “A deal this size, there will be lots more Armenians outside. Somebody saw me come in, and will be calling for reinforcements now that his associates haven’t come out with the weapon. The guy in the kitchen was on the phone when I walked in. Whoever he was talking to will wonder why contact was broken. We’ve got a few more minutes, but not much more than that before the next attempt to penetrate the townhouse is underway.”
“This is hopeless. I really fucked up. Oh my God! I might have to call Joey to send in the troops to save me. He's going to eat me alive!”
“I’ve got an idea.”
Chapter 6
The mission had gone hot. Buried in the middle of the renegade pack of missing nanotechnology seekers was me and one green-eyed lady thief. I began experiencing a sudden decline in enthusiasm. Maybe it was because of the bad manners I was about to display. After all, Granny always told me never to eat, torch, and run.
I could have searched the bodies of the dead men and gathered some sort of intelligence, but I decided I was too old and tired to play it that way anymore. So I doused the two in the garage with a five gallon pail of red paint and set them on fire instead. It was spiritless work. I was no longer one for the game of shadows and silent screamings. Time had not been kind to me. Had not diminished by even one whit the horror and heartbreak I had known upon this earth. When the bodies were sufficiently ablaze, I headed back to join my lady friend in her living room.
There were men outside, younger men who still felt it important to play the game. According to the rules, they were my enemies. I am not God. I did not create these men. I had no desire to be their judge and executioner. However, they’d seen me enter the townhouse. Which meant they were getting ready to pour on the juice any minute. I was alone, and outnumbered. I had no idea who they were or what they’d be using. Sometimes the complexity of a thing can be it’s own undoing. Like the telephone system. Which made it possible for the first time in history to never need to get to know your neighbor again. A hundred years ago, you joined with the others and helped build your neighbor’s barn. Now you poison his dog because the barking interferes with your TV.
The men outside would have a plan for getting to Madonna and me. There would be an intelligence to it, and an orchestration towards the end of securing for themselves the high tech nano-pea currently lodged somewhere in Madonna’s intestinal tract.
In addition to the burning of the bodies in the garage, I came up with a collateral plan of my own. The concept was simple. Escape by reason of high speed meanness. There is a mental preparation. Before I waded into the enemy, I took a moment to think about my expected retirement age, and the loved ones I’d be leaving behind. Actually there was nobody. Except my cat. I had a last imaginary meal, mentally consuming a final Big Mac. I then put my imagination to work, imagining myself on a big Navy carrier, placing all my earthly thoughts into an old sea chest and shutting the lid tight before heaving the chest overboard where began its journey to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The process left me with an empty feeling, a hole as it were. I filled the hole with a single emotion--total contempt for the enemy.
Having done the above, I pulled Madonna to her feet.
“Let’s go.”
“Go?”
It wasn’t time to talk or debate. The smoke from the burning bodies was starting to enter the residence. I took Madonna by the arm, opened the front door, and escorted the two of us out onto the porch, careful to avoid tripping on the many pots of hydrangeas. I reached into my bag, came up with a willy peter grenade, the one shaped like a soup can, with the gray pot metal casing and big yellow stripe, pulled the pin and tossed it inside. I shut the door, grabbed up Madonna bodily and quickly jogged hard and fast to my right.
The blast radius is normally about fifteen yards in diameter when in the open. A good soldier can lob it about thirty yards. When somebody throws one, everybody better be heads down with their butts well-covered. And that’s outdoors. Inside a closed room, the blast rolls over itself, generating a tremendous energy. White phosphorous burns so hot it even burns under water. The whopping explosion blew the windows out all the way to the third floor and gave our ears a good waxing. I set Madonna down and we began to walk up the strand. A bunch of people ran, roller bladed and biked past us to get a better look at the mayhem I’d just caused, including a couple of cops on bicycles, attracted to the roaring flames and thick black smoke pouring out of Madonna’s former home. The two of us might as well have been invisible.
Chapter 7
It was a nice day for a walk. Not too hot and not too cold. The afternoon fog added just the right touch of melancholy. It was the kind of afternoon to head down to the Santa Monica pier and grab a decent cup of Mexican coffee and a bag of churros and just let it all hang out. It took about twenty minutes to walk leisurely to the pier and do just that. There weren't many people about, due to the fog, and as a result we really had the place to ourselves. The restaurant at the end of the pier had some nice outdoor tables and chairs. The place was comfortably close to a small Santa Monica Police Department outpost complete with black-and-white cruiser parked out front. I looked inside. The regular cops were nowhere to be found, preferring instead to be at the fireworks display farther south. A police cadet who looked young enough to be my nephew was stationed inside. Probably feeling important to be holding down the fort. We’ve become a generation taught to take orders from anyone wearing a uniform. His uniform was clean and well starched. Perhaps he’d come out in a minute or two and bark a few commands at the ragtag flux of pier people. He might run into trouble without backup. The ratio of prison tattoos to exposed flesh was high in this area, higher than, say, Woodland Hills where the cadet probably came from.
Hide in plain sight. Walk past the police post. Stare curiously in their window. I did. The cadet stared back at me, sizing me up, wondering how I’d respond to a freshly barked order. He looked away. To bark another day. The rescue work to the south of us was probably not going too well, being as how the place would be too hot to enter. The remains of my enemies, when found, would approximate the same consistency as a slab of burnt bacon.
“Oh,” Madonna finally said, the power of speech returned to her after about the space of an hour. We were seated at a nice outdoor table by the fisher people at the end of the pier. It was early yet for anything to be seriously biting. The restaurant was doing a loose trade, it not being the weekend or any other sort of special day. We’d been followed. A couple more of the Armenian mafia guys in the expensive suits were hanging back just off our four o’clock. They were really into their cell phones. The big fat one seemed to have his permanently sutured to his ear. I knew they were awaiting a transport vehicle before they made their big move, which I figured would center around an attempt to kill me and whisk Madonna away for filleting at some secondary location.
“Oh,” she said again. “I can’t believe you killed three men in my townhouse and then burned the thing to the ground. Earlier, when I was interviewing you, it seemed more like a joke about the way you burned twenty-three people to death on an oil platform. But it’s terribly real, isn’t it?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You want another Mexican?”
“Yes.”
I signaled the waiter for another round of the great stuff. Through some accident of fate and timing, we’d managed to arrive at the exact spot where the best Mexican coffee on the planet was served.
"My brother will kill you," she said.
"No, maybe I'll kill him."
"You don't understand, Nasty," she said. "My brother Joey has occult powers. He spent 3 years in South America with a shaman. He can be in two places at once. He can create dreams in your mind which seem real. He can levitate his body off the ground. He's a demon. He will plunge you into hell."
"He's a brujo," I said. "A male witch." I wasn't all that surprised. The Mafia was filled with things which went bump in the night. I had met a witch once at Las Animas bay. The man floated over the surf. While I was fascinated by that illusion, the real version of him stole my wallet.
“There’s two men watching us,” she said.
“Fellow travelers on our road.”
“They’re going to kill us.”
“Not both at the same time. Me first. You they’ll save for later.”
“Nasty, they’re going to kill us.”
“They haven’t so far.”
“But they’re going to.”
“Perhaps. Does it make you sad?”
“It does. I was thinking just this minute I never had any real children--not the kind I could love with true maternal affection. After giving birth to Joey, I never wanted any. Now I feel as though I do, and if I’m not allowed to, it will be a great tragedy.”
“I favor staying alive,” I said. “Perhaps in that way, you will be then able to accomplish your dream of having children.”
“I can’t. Joey’s birth came with serious complications. They took everything out of me. But none of it matters anymore. There’s no way out, Nasty. We’re trapped at the end of this pier. You surprised them at my place, the way you just blew everything to smithereens. They weren’t expecting anything like that. And they were afraid to make their move with all the cops and fire crews flooding into the area. But now they’re on to us. As soon as it’s safe, they’re going to blow us both away.”
“Not you, Madonna. They can’t risk hurting you until they find out where the nano-pea is. That’s why there’s only two of them watching us. They’re just spotters taking orders from somebody else. What they’re probably waiting for is for you to go to the powder room. That’s when they’ll try and take me. Those two will go ahead and make the try in broad daylight, to create a diversion while the third member of the team takes you alive. If I had to guess, they’ve already got somebody in the ladies’ room waiting for you. They’ll give you the needle in there and haul you away in the van they’ve got coming.”
“There’s no way you can know that. And there’s no van.”
“They’ve watched us drinking coffee. Sooner or later, we have to pee.”
“Oh.”
As a matter of fact, I did have to. That’s the problem with Mexican coffee. It makes you jittery as a Mexican jumping bean. I hated to do it, but I did. I walked to the far railing, away from the spotters, but keeping them in view, and relieved myself directly into the Pacific Ocean. No one saw it but Madonna and the two spotters. I was careful not to offend.
“You’re crude, Nasty. You piss like a horse. Without using your hands.”
“Now who’s being crude.”
Chapter 8
From where I was sitting, I could see the van approaching, driving slowly down the middle of the pier. The two men began to stir from their post. Their transportation and support troops had arrived. It was show time at last. I reached inside my bag and drew out the Colt Model 1911 Commander. It was already cocked with the thumb safety off. The fastest setting for a quick snap shot. Few men carry the old Colt anymore. They think it’s too heavy. Even a very strong man has trouble controlling the thing. The recoil and the blast are awesome, and the pushing inward and downward cause problems for some guys, who have to lift it back into position with every shot. I’ve never had that problem and have always favored the Colt. I wield my Commander with authority. And enjoy fully the offensive benefits which come with using bigger bullets. Bigger means greater hydrostatic shock upon impact. You want to knock somebody into the nickel seats, pop them with a Colt .45.
I began blasting fireballs in the direction of the spotters. There it was again. That phone thing those guys were into. The fat guy just couldn’t decide what to do with his. I squeezed off a couple of rounds and scored on him twice before laying a single tap into his partner’s chest. I must have hit a bone; he spun completely around before collapsing in a heap, dead from hydrostatic shock the minute the heavy slug impacted the bone.
They were both a couple of freezers. I loaded a fresh clip into the Commander. Reaching into my bag, I grabbed something else I thought would come in handy, set the timer, and began running towards the van. The guys in the van weren’t freezers, but they weren’t all that fast. One guy was almost out the passenger door when I put a bullet into his head before taking the time to group four shots carefully, blasting a huge hole in the front windshield. I kept on coming and when I knew I wouldn’t miss, fast-balled my pipe bomb through the windshield opening before dropping and rolling behind a heavy concrete trash container. The timer closed the circuit and the thing blew, the whumping blast sucking the air right out of my lungs. Glass and shrapnel were flying everywhere as the blast flipped the van completely over, through the guard rail and off the pier into the surf below. The instant inferno and clouds of black smoke and steam were impressive. Even the resident police cadet appeared to be moved by the event, his face in the window of his kiosk askew in astonished awe.
While he wasn’t looking I spotted the Armenian they’d had stashed in the ladies’ bathroom. He must have been hiding in one of the stalls. He’d completely lost his focus. Had failed to see me, was watching instead the general commotion. That’s okay. I don’t need somebody to be looking right at me when I shoot them. I stitched him up the side with three more shots, the final one just below the ear. He didn’t spin around, simply crumpled up where he stood.
I ran back to my table, grabbed Madonna and began running down the pier with all the other panicked civilians who were doing the same thing. Blend in. Many in the crowd were running and looking back at me, alarmed at what I’d done but afraid to point and call out at the evil man in their midst for fear they’d be next. Perhaps they sensed the uniformed cadet left behind to keep the peace wasn’t up to the task of ordering me away from their world and into the darker shadows of police custody.
We slowed to a walk to make the climb up the steep sidewalk to Ocean Avenue. Everything hurt. I was too old and had too much pain from that ancient sniper bullet to be doing any of it. But I did it anyway. One does what one must. We caught a cab at the top of the bluff and made our way down Colorado Avenue, hanging a right on Lincoln to the Santa Monica Freeway entrance, a route which would take me to the one place I knew I’d be safe--the southern end of downtown Los Angeles and my rat trap tenement across the street from the Greyhound Station at Alameda and Seventh. The old saying was true then and it’s still true today. There’s just no place like home.
Chapter 9
We were at my kitchen table on the tenth, top-most floor of the slummy red brick building overlooking Seventh Street, across from which was the Greyhound terminal.
“Nasty," Madonna said, "are you still working for my brother?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll work for me?”
“No.”
“What about Uncle Ernie. What would you say if I told you he arranged for me to steal the nano-pea. He set up the whole thing. To cripple Joey’s operation. To make me the new Godfather. The first lady Godfather. If you knew that to be true, then would you help me?”
“No.”
“You’re a coward.”
“Am I a coward? Perhaps. But I’m alive.”
“Exactly what a coward would say. You shot those men down before they even had a chance to defend themselves. You killed everybody in that van with your pipe bomb before they knew what was happening. You remained coolheaded when everybody around us at the pier was screaming and crying and running for shelter.”
“And that makes me a coward? Because I stood firm in the face of evil and senseless panic? Because I had an exit plan?”
The green eyes hooded and the lips drew tight. “You don’t fight fair. By the way, your view up here on the tenth floor stinks. But I bet all the girls tell you that.”
My view did stink, both visually and osmotically from an olfactory point of view. A view of dingy buildings and chain link fences, dirty, dented-up buses, taxicabs, travelers, homeless hustlers, foreigners from every land, (their youth in shorts, mountain boots and backpacks as though upon some grand camping expedition), gangbangers in primer gray Oldsmobile battle wagons, Mexican nationals with green cards and without, beggars pushing shopping carts and cops who were smart enough to never get out of their units, the entire thing for the most part appearing in the midst of the grimy downtown region like a demented Disney diorama wreathed in exhaust smoke from the belching Detroit diesels which powered the legion of buses. It was the kind of vision that the decent people of the world had better one day wake up to or find themselves engulfed in it. At which point it would be too late to fix.