by G. M. Ford
Marshall sat and watched the man waddle across the access road, amble beneath the covered walkway, and disappear into an Eddie Bauer store.
Soon as I got back to the apartment, took a half-hour shower, and ate a peanut butter sandwich, I called Tim Eagen in Seattle. Went right to voicemail. Ten minutes later, he buzzed me back. Eagen wasn’t big on preambles.
“You been to your computer?” he asked.
“Not in the past few hours,” I said.
“I got a make from immigration on the two guys the Brotherhood sent down to Mexico to trace your bank accounts. I sent it to your computer. Coupla small-time losers. Not the sorta assholes you’d expect the Brotherhood to send after anybody.”
“What . . . no swastika tattoos?”
I heard him flipping pages. “No tattoos period, either one of them. No felony convictions either, or the Mexicans wouldn’t have let their sorry asses into the country.”
I didn’t say anything.
“They rented a different car for their return to the States than the one they drove down in. The info’s in the file. They been charging things to eat and drink in Ocean Beach, so it’s a good bet they’re still around someplace.”
“What about lodging?”
I sat there and listened to pages turning.
“Nothing for lodging. Just gas and food.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“How you feeling?” he asked.
I told him about catching up with Brandon Pitts and taking him in for a blood test.
“At least you’ll know,” he said. “I was you, I’d take a little time to see if you can’t confirm the information. It’s task force info . . . you know . . . it’s a cooperative multiagency thing. Politics sometimes wins out over getting it right.”
I was still processing the question of whether or not I actually wanted to know, when Eagen said, “I got a charity dinner. Gotta go.” Click.
He wasn’t big on goodbyes either.
I made another peanut butter sandwich on my way through the kitchen and took it with me into my bedroom where my desk was. The sounds of my chomping were accompanied by the soft bong of the iMac turning on. Every Wednesday night, year-round, O.B. has a farmers market. One of the regular merchants specializes in homemade coconut peanut butter. I was so bonkers for it, I always kept a spare in case I needed a “go-to jar.” As far as I was concerned, if that stuff wasn’t a controlled substance, it damn well ought to be.
I scrolled through my email until I came to one without a hint of who the sender was, and there was Eagen’s file. Lamar Pope and Chub Greenway. A couple of marginal white supremacist types with no criminal records. I clicked on pictures. Stopped chewing and sat there openmouthed and gaping squished peanut butter and white bread. One was a weaselly-looking fucker with greasy hair and a rodential grin. The other was the largest SOB I’d seen since . . . goddamn . . . since earlier today.
“No shit,” I said to nobody in particular.
They’d been at the Little Lion Cafe for over an hour, waiting for dark. Lamar was sipping his latte and checking the street. Chub was across the street in the mini-mart. He’d taken one look at the menu and lost his damn mind.
“What kinda stuff is that?” He dropped the menu on the table, then just as quickly snatched it up again, reading out loud, “Belgian Lion Potatoes.” He waved the menu like an orchestra conductor. “What in holy hell is that?” He snapped the menu with his finger. “What? It speaks French or something. Something called a Buddha Bowl. Only damn thing on here I recognize is the Apple Crisp.”
“It’s just a menu, man,” Lamar offered, sipping at his latte.
“No it’s not,” Chub insisted. “It’s all those snooty types out there on the Facebook . . . postin’ pictures of hundred-dollar lunches, when my folks are out there buyin’ Wonder Bread and Top Ramen. And worse yet, they’re rubbin’ our damn noses in it every freakin’ day. Braggin’ how they eat better, and dress better, and own better houses and cars . . . and have better kids, who end up livin’ better lives than our kids.” He dropped the menu again and folded his arms across his chest.
Lamar started to say something, but Chub cut him off.
“It’s all that, man. All the crap we got going on in this country right now is ’cause of the same thing. Whole buncha regular people in this country would as soon elect a baboon president or jump into a handbasket headed for hell just so they could shut those snooty Facebook types the hell up. Like they’re sayin’ that if they’re gonna be down there in the mud, everybody else might just as well be down there in the muck with us.”
He grated the chair backward and got to his feet. “I’m goin’ across the street and get me some real food for later,” he announced.
Fifty feet up, the palm trees swayed like hula dancers. Buncha people using the Laundromat. Pretty good crowd at the Mexican joint up by Ebers. A few random skateboarders. That was about it. Except for the chickies. Whatever this joint was lacking, it sure as hell wasn’t good-looking chiquitas. They were everywhere. Armies of blue-haired, leg-tattooed woman flesh crawled along the sidewalks like a motorcade.
Lamar hadda admit it. This place had its charms.
He was leaving in the morning. Gettin’ the hell out. He’d already decided that. No way he wanted to be around when Chub killed the Waterman guy, so he was getting out of Dodge first thing in the A.M.
He watched Chub come out of the mini-mart with a bale of snacks and head up Point Loma Avenue to dump them in the car. Lamar dug into his pants pocket and grabbed the burner phone, thumbed in the number, and waited. The number you are trying to reach is no longer in service. Please leave a message at the tone. He tried again. Same result. Goddamn thing was on autodial, so he hadn’t misdialed. Third time he left a message.
“We found your boy Waterman,” he said. He found the paper he’d written the address on. “Forty-eight ninety-six Del Monte Avenue. We ain’t sure what apartment yet. And I’m tellin’ you, man, Greenway’s gonna cancel his ass tomorrow. I ain’t got no doubt about it.” His voice rose. “I also ain’t got nothin’ to do with this shit. I done everything I could to talk some sense into the guy. This shit’s all on Greenway. Not me. All of it.”
Almost in slow motion, Lamar hung up, set his cup on the little round table, and sat back in the seat. They’ve cut me loose, his brain told him. Why the hell would they do that? Unless . . . you know, unless for some reason, they didn’t give a shit about Waterman anymore, which was real unlikely as far as Lamar was concerned. If anybody needed a scapegoat, it was the Brotherhood brass. With half the membership blaming them for the disaster up in Conway and over a hundred other guys either dead, hiding out, or in jail, they really needed to make an example out of somebody, and this Waterman guy was it. No changing horses neither. Not this late in the game. Waterman was it.
Then there was the question of whether or not to tell Chub what he was thinking. The guy had a right to know if the Brotherhood was still looking to kill his big ass, but on the other hand Lamar couldn’t tell him about it without letting on that he’d been ratting them out the whole time they’d been in California. The big gorilla wasn’t going to like that at all, so that sure as hell wasn’t gonna work neither.
Lamar went back to watching the palm trees and sipping at his latte. The painted ladies at the other table got up, threw some money on the table, and headed up Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. The wobble of their resplendent asses held Lamar’s attention like flypaper. Wasn’t till Chub sat down across from him that Lamar looked that way.
“I’m going back in the morning,” Lamar said. Which was of course a bald-faced lie. Showing up at the supposed meeting place after Chub killed Waterman was not one of life’s possibilities as far as Lamar was concerned. Might as well take the Browning and blow his own brains out. No sir. Lamar was headed for the unknown parts of parts unknown.
As was his nature, Lamar gave it one last try. The old up close and personal approach. “I’m tellin’ you, man, these Aryan
assholes ain’t the forgive-and-forget types neither. No sir. Those fuckers eat hate for breakfast, man. They’re gonna be lookin’ for you forever if you go through with this . . . and if you don’t mind me saying, Chub, your dimensions make the prospect of hidin’ out a whole lot more difficult than it would be for, how shall I say, us more diminutive folks. Those fuckers are gonna be all over you like fleas on a cockapoo.”
“Tomorrow’s the day I make my folks proud,” Chub said.
“Who ate all the damn peanut butter?” were the words that yanked me from my stupor.
My eyes snapped open; I ran a hand over my face. I’d crapped out sitting at my desk. I had a major case of Igor neck. When my vision reorganized itself, I was looking at Gabe’s head peering at me around the doorjamb. “Where’s the stash?” Gabe asked.
“The little cabinet over the stove. Behind the flour.”
Took me a couple of minutes to recalibrate my faculties. “After you chow down,” I yelled out to the kitchen, “come in here. I’ve got something to show you.”
Gabe strolled into the room, coconut peanut butter sandwich in one hand and big glass of milk in the other. “You get Bar Code down for his tests?”
“Yeah,” I said, “and his name’s Brandon.”
“So . . . when do you . . .”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
I hit the iMac’s space bar to wake it up. “Eagen called. Here’s the two guys the Aryan Brotherhood sent after us.”
The images on the screen stopped Gabe midchomp. The big forehead wrinkled.
Gabe pointed with the milk. “Isn’t that . . . those guys . . . those two . . . didn’t we see them earlier today at the cop shop?”
“Yep.”
Gabe made the peanut butter sandwich disappear, then chugalugged it down with the rest of the milk. “You got any idea what in hell’s going on here?”
“None,” I said.
“Or why they were at the cop station today?”
“Nope.”
“They can’t be hitters,” Gabe pronounced after a minute of staring at the screen. “Neither of them’s the type. That greasy little runt can’t weigh over a buck fifty, and I mean . . . for Christ’s sake, who’s gonna hire a nine-hundred-pound hit man?” Gabe pointed at the screen. “You gotta be able to blend in. That ol’ boy can be seen from space.”
“Good point,” I conceded. “What then?”
“What’s in the computer file?”
“The skinny one, Lamar Pope, is a small-time grifter and con man. Short cons. Identity theft . . . credit cards, that sort of crap. He was living in Arkansas and about to take a lot of local heat for credit card fraud, probably looking at his first felony conviction, when he got the offer from the Brotherhood to take a trip to Mexico. The cops think he got affiliated with the Brotherhood during one of his county jail stints. One of those lockups where you got no choice but to pick a side and get on it. He’s not a true believer at all. More like a hanger-on. They think he only accepted because he needed to get out of town for a while. And like you said, he’s definitely not muscle, either by trade or inclination.”
“And the big guy?”
“Chub Greenway. He’s a little easier to figure out. His older brother Randy was killed up in Conway. Randy was a true believer. Hated everybody. Vaporized, as I understand it. So the task force is thinking that for Greenway, this is probably personal—you know, revenge for his older brother. Defending the family honor and stuff like that. Pope and Greenway were supposed to collect some information in Mexico and then hustle back to the nest and tell all. Nothing but that. But . . . seems somewhere along the way, Mr. Greenway decided to hunt us down on his own. Pope called it in, even though he wasn’t supposed to break radio silence. Told the Aryan Brotherhood how Greenway had gone rogue and he didn’t know what the fuck to do. They go back and forth until they finally tell Pope he’s gonna have to stop Greenway on his own. Put out the big guy’s lights singlehandedly for the good of the cause. Pope about shits his pants. This isn’t his kind of thing at all. Meanwhile they arrange for Pope to get a gun, hoping to either embolden or shame him into doing the deed, but Pope calls back the next day and tells ’em gun or no gun, he isn’t killing anybody, not now, not ever. They get pissed and tell him if he doesn’t pop Greenway, he better stay awake for the rest of his days ’cause they’re surely coming for his scrawny ass. Pope tells ’em to stuff that too—says he still isn’t gonna do it.” I let my hands flop into my lap. “That’s where we are,” I said. “The number they were tapping is no longer in service, and recent credit card purchases say that, as of this morning, Pope and Greenway are right here in O.B., still looking for us.”
“Sounds to me like maybe we ought to find them before they find us.”
Garrett had been assured the gun was cold. The supplier assured him the piece had never been registered anywhere. That it was a World War II souvenir. Spent the past fifty years in a trunk in somebody’s attic. The source said he’d picked it up at an estate sale, cleaned it up, tried it out, and pronounced it a great little pocket gun. A .765-caliber Beretta. Fired 32 autos. They’d agreed on both a price and a delivery system.
Garrett sat in the rental car half a block south of the little neighborhood lending library. From his distance it looked like an oversize birdhouse or maybe an overdecorated mailbox. Definitely handmade. He watched an older Hispanic woman rummage through the donated books, select one, and close the little glass doors.
Right on schedule, the blue Toyota he’d been told to expect looped around him and pulled up next to the lending library. He watched as the driver unbuckled himself, got out, and checked the immediate area. The driver waited until the Hispanic woman turned right on Voltaire and disappeared, then walked over and added what looked like a book to the donated collection and drove off.
Garrett started easing the rental car forward even before the Toyota was back in motion. He jammed the car into “Park,” got out, and pulled open the glass doors. He reached over the top of the shelf of books, found the package’s smooth cardboard finish, and eased it back over the reading material. He slipped the package under his arm, closed the doors, and hustled back to the rental car. The package was about the size of a book but way too heavy. He smiled and eased the rental out onto Muir Street and drove off.
Gabe and I had decided to keep it low-key, like we were going downtown for breakfast and taking a nice walk on the beach before wandering back home. We did that several times a week, and we thought it would be better than staging a full-scale search for Pope and Greenway, which would surely set off the local underemployed tongue-wagging grapevine. Instead, we’d simply be a couple of locals out for a stroll, talkin’ with our neighbors as we communed with nature.
A dozen surfers were riding the swells alongside the pier. The tourists hadn’t arrived yet. Those left here had no place else to go.
Later in the day, when the beach scene was in full swing, the sea wall would have morphed into a steamy mix of locals availing themselves of beach culture, and hordes of tourists snapping ocean selfies while chewing on take-out tacos, all this going on while the dazed and confused stumbled among them like gypsies in the palace, panhandling, selling trinkets and peace and love and art and handmade this and that, all to the melodic strains of four or five wretched self-taught guitar players wailing away, hoping to separate a few coins from the passing parade of tourists.
Gabe caught up to me while I was crossing the parking lot by the big lifeguard station at the bottom of Santa Monica. We slipped between cars, out onto the grass, and kept heading north until we ran out of green.
Up here, between lifeguard stations 3 and 4, the beach was deserted, so we kicked off our flip-flops, walked out onto the sand, and headed back the other way. Gabe hiked up the Nike shorts and waded out into the water . . . knee-high.
“Still cold,” was the pronouncement.
First person we ran into was an older Asian woman wearing a straw Chinese coolie hat, carrying a picker and an
orange plastic bucket. The old woman was a regular. She scrounged from the beach garbage cans three or four times each day. Fast as the tourists filled them up with cans and bottles, she came along and cleaned them out. Over the months I’d said hello to her half a dozen times as I walked the beach in the morning but had never received so much as a syllable in response, so we gave her a polite nod and kept walking.
The second guy was so stoned on something, he’d morphed into a restaurant critic. I made the mistake of asking him how it was going.
He responded with, “Whatever you do, don’t order the octopus tacos.”
Gabe grinned and asked, “Why not?”
“Tough, man . . . like chewing bungee cords.”
We let it go at that and kept moving south. He, for some reason, decided to tag along with us as we moved down the beach. Babbling as we walked along the sand. I recall something about the illuminati secretly running San Diego and the notion that while love may be eternal, the blow jobs tend to taper off. The rest of it I just tuned out.
Somewhere south of lifeguard station 2 he vaporized back into the atmosphere.
Wasn’t until we ran into the bubble guy that we picked up some of the gossip we were looking for. I didn’t know the guy’s name, but I’d bandied words with him quite a few times. He was a multitasker. His life’s work seemed to consist of flying kites, throwing a boomerang, and blowing huge bubbles that floated over the beach, mesmerizing the jumping children as the giant silvery orbs floated across Abbott Street and spent themselves on the front of the Ocean Beach Hotel. He was unpacking his stuff for the day.
“What’s up, man?” I asked.
“Same ol’, same ol’,” he said. “Another day in paradise.”
I unfolded a copy of Pope’s and Greenway’s passport photographs that I’d printed before we’d left the apartment. “You seen these guys?” I asked him.