Romeo's Town (Mike Romeo Thrillers Book 6)

by James Scott Bell

  I tried to believe her.

  “Some people go on the attack,” she said. “I’m glad that is not your choice. Which leaves us with repose. Do you know what I mean by that?”

  “Rest,” I said.

  “Not only that. It means to quietly give attention to the formation of your soul. It means attending to your emotions, but not letting emotions be your master. Your emotions matter, but as an ambiance. Your mind—your gift—directs you in this.”

  My hamburger was half done.

  “There’s a verse in the Bible,” Mom said. “In quietness and in trust will be your strength.”

  “Trust what?” I said.

  “Who do you think?”

  “Who?”

  She smiled at me.

  “God, of course,” I said.

  “That’s what repose means,” she said.

  Then she reached across the table and put her hand on my cheek. It was the softest, loveliest, most comforting touch I’ve ever felt.

  I started to cry.

  She moved her chair around next to mine and put her arm around my shoulder.

  I was embarrassed, being out on the street like that, with tears. But my mother being there made it all right.

  At that moment I started to trust.

  But all that blew up when my mother and father were murdered, leaving me alone in the world. So what did I do? I withdrew. Developed a nice, thick ice ring.

  And then I started to attack.

  As arranged, C Dog met me at the motel. He was dressed for the part—floppy black T-shirt with Punk’s Not Dead emblazoned across it, low-riding blue jeans, battered black Converse high tops. Then again, that’s how he usually dressed.

  We drove into Hollywood separately and parked in the cavernous garage at Hollywood and Highland.

  I went out first, walking a block to something called The Museum of Illusions. This is where you can go in with your girlfriend and get your picture taken of the two of you on a raft with the sinking Titanic in the background. Perfect visual metaphor for our times. And it’ll only set you back sixty bucks.

  Outside there’s an alcove doorway. That’s where I set up so I could view the Scientology building across the street. Originally, it was the Christie Hotel, which opened in 1922 as Hollywood’s first high-rise. It’s one of several Hollywood landmarks Scientology has gobbled up over the decades.

  As I waited for C Dog to show, a bit of Hollywood Boulevard enterprise unfolded in front of me. A guy about fifty or so with gray hair and jeans came along, carrying a big white bucket and a sign. He turned the bucket over and sat on it. He put a plastic bowl down in front of him, fished out a bill from his pocket and threw it in the bowl. Then he lit a cigarette and put up the sign for all to see. In hand lettering it said Need Money for Hookers and Coke.

  He gave me a quick glance. He had the look of a dog who had just peed on the carpet.

  Coincidentally, that’s exactly how I saw him.

  Thirty seconds later a man and woman—who looked like they’d stepped off the Greyhound from Wichita—stopped and gawked. Then laughed. The guy on the bucket gave them a fifty-watt smile.

  The man took out his phone and said, “Tricia has got to see this!”

  The bucket guy gave him a thumbs-up.

  The man took a picture. And started to walk away.

  The bucket guy said, “Ahem!”

  Mr. and Mrs. Wichita turned around.

  Bucket Guy pointed to the bowl.

  “Oh!” Mr. Wichita said, recognizing his egregious faux pas. He quickly snatched a buck from his wallet and dropped it in the bowl.

  “Have a nice evening,” said Bucket Guy. Then he looked at me again. Now he had triumph in his eyes. I still pictured him as that dog.

  He said, “Is this a great country or what?”

  “It’s a privilege to watch you,” I said.

  “Hey, I’m not robbing anybody.” He frowned and took a drag on his cig.

  I folded my arms and looked up the street. C Dog was crossing Highland. He had a nice, lost-looking shuffle going. The kid had talent.

  Except when he broke the fourth wall. After slow walking past the Scientology building, he gave me a quick look, and shrugged.

  I balled my fists and turned my back, hoping he got the message.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Bucket Guy said.

  Turning around, I relaxed my hands and thought about moving to another location. I decided Bucket Guy was the perfect pawn in my chess game. If I was in conversation with him it wouldn’t look so much like I was casing the scene.

  So I slid down to a sitting position. This is not an uncommon look on Hollywood Boulevard. From here I could look at Bucket Guy and still watch the Scientology building. C Dog stood on the corner, looking around, and not anymore at me.

  “How long have you been running this scam?” I said.

  “This is no scam,” he said.

  “No?”

  “Why do you even care?”

  “I like to study human nature,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” Bucket Guy said. “You’re just floating through life studying human nature, la-dee-dah.”

  “Nobody floats through life,” I said. “You sink or swim.”

  “There you go. This is me swimming. I’m not making anybody unhappy. I’m providing people with some laughs. They give me some money. Where’s the harm in that?”

  “When you put it that way—”

  “I mean, I could be out there holding people up with a gun.”

  “You have a point.”

  “I tried working, but I don’t like it. So I come down here and take in some funds, tax free. I’m an entertainer. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do anyway.”

  I glanced across the street and saw C Dog doing his aimless act. He had his hands in his pockets, and was walking in little circles.

  “Originally,” Bucket Guy said, “I thought I’d be a standup comedian and maybe get my own series, like Jerry Seinfeld. Or a talk show. That didn’t work out. I did some sales in a boiler room. And you know what? You lie all the time. You work the phone and the emails with a script that tells how your store went out of business and you have to move all this merch. I didn’t like lying to people, so I figured, why not tell the truth? I tried a sign that said ‘Just need money to live on.’ You know what that got me? Bupkis. So that’s when I came up with something brilliant. A lie that is obvious entertainment, which means it’s no lie at all.”

  “You’re a philosopher.”

  “A businessman. If you can make ’em laugh, they’ll give you the dough. Capitalism!”

  As if on cue, a couple of young women stopped and giggled. Bucket Guy put on his entertainer face and smiled. One of the women turned to me and said, “Would you take our picture?”

  Never one to turn down a reasonable request, I stood and took the phone she handed me. They got on either side of Bucket Guy and everybody smiled. I took the shot.

  “Don’t forget to feed the kitty,” I said, handing back the phone.

  The women looked perplexed.

  “He’s here to make a living,” I said.

  “Oh yeah,” said the one with the phone. “Give him something.”

  The other woman fed a dollar into the cap, and the two moved on.

  “Thanks,” Bucket Guy said.

  “Doing my part for the free market,” I said.

  Across the street, a guy walked up to C Dog and started talking. C Dog listened, nodded. The guy turned and C Dog followed. They disappeared around the corner.

  “Who are you really?” Bucket Guy said.

  I stood. “Gotta go.”

  “Aw, we were just getting started. I get a little lonely out here.”

  “If I meet a talent scout from NBC, I’ll send him your way.”

  “Deal!”

  I walked to the corner and saw C Dog and the mad hatter huddled on the side street. The exchange was quick. C Dog, as I’d instructed, walked back toward Highland
. The hatter continued further on down the side street, crossed over, and turned into a fenced area. I figured it to be a parking lot of some sort.

  A few minutes later the hatter came walking back to the boulevard, and took up residence there once more.

  I crossed the street.

  Halfway down the side street I saw him. He was leaning on a black Caddie, counting some bills. He wore a white sport jacket with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows, black pants, white shoes. His hair was dark and slicked back in a manner that made him look like Lucifer or a governor of California.

  “Danny Durant?” I said.

  His head jerked up. He looked surprised for a second, then tried to cover it with street bravado. All these expressions look the same—the head lolls back on the neck, the mouth drops open a little, the eyes narrow.

  He stuffed the money in the pocket of his jacket. “Who?”

  “Danny, short for Daniel. Durant. That would be you.”

  “And you’re a cop,” he said. A good move on his part. There’s nothing preventing a cop from lying about his status, but even low-life street scum can usually tell when he is.

  “I’m just an interested third party,” I said.

  “So?”

  “What I mean is,” I said, “I’m interested in what you’re doing at Elias.”

  “Elias?”

  “You’re one of its illustrious graduates, right?”

  “Get lost.”

  “Work with me, Danny.”

  He paused a moment, smiled. “Don’t think I will.”

  The change in his demeanor told me we were not alone. Sure enough, a guy from the streetside was walking toward us. Big and wide. Another ex-con type. He wore a military jacket. His hands were in the pockets. He withdrew his right and showed me his knuckledusters—hard plastic. They don’t trigger metal detectors like their brass cousins, but can do just as much damage to a skull. The right blow can send you to the big sleep.

  “Time to go,” Danny Durant said.

  Knuckleduster rotated his fist a couple of times.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” I said. “I only have a couple of questions. Very civilized.”

  “You see my man?” Danny Durant said. “Don’t mess with my man. He kills. And he likes it.”

  That seemed to describe him perfectly.

  I back-fisted Danny in the face. He screamed and grabbed his newly broken nose.

  Knuckleduster charged.

  The French martial art of kickboxing—known as savate—developed out of street fighting in Paris and Marseille back in the eighteenth century. It comes from the French word for “old boot,” which is what their soldiers and sailors wore. That boot could do damage when delivered to the right spot on an opponent.

  As far as I know, there is no French word for “deadly tennis shoe.” Nor is there a martial art associated with sneakers. But I am not a founder of any fighting school other than Do it to him before he does it to you.

  I jumped, my body perpendicular to the ground, and smashed Knuckleduster in the gut with my left shoe.

  He doubled over.

  I popped both sides of his head with my cupped hands, blasting his eardrums and disabling his equilibrium. Then I gave him Romeo’s Hammer, a right to the temple, sending him to the ground.

  I stomped his right wrist, bent over and took off the plastic knuckles. His mouth was open wide, sucking for air. I stuck the plastic knuckles in his mouth and shoved. He made guttural noises, like a man drowning inside a cement mixer.

  When I looked up, Danny Durant was in his Caddie.

  The car gunned forward. But it had to make a wide turn to get out of the lot.

  Which gave me the opportunity to Gretzky him. The great Wayne Gretzky once explained, “I don’t go to where the puck is. I go to where the puck is going to be.”

  I ran to where his car was going to be.

  The heel is the most underrated part of the human anatomy. For example, it is the only way to kick in a door. All those cops on TV using front kicks would only end up with a dislocated hip. Or worse, using their shoulders on a door would get them only broken clavicles. A mule kick is the only way to do it.

  And to smash the glass of a car window, the well-placed heel is a natural ball-peen hammer.

  Just before he got to the driveway of the little lot I jumped and heeled the window.

  The glass shattered. Danny drove his car into an iron post.

  He was a little muddled.

  I punched his face through the window. He got more muddled. I reached in and opened the door and dragged him out by his coat.

  Knuckleduster was still groaning on the ground. Holding Durant with one hand, I went over and gave Knuckleduster a kick to the side of the head, enough to keep him down for awhile longer.

  I walked Durant around the car. It was like helping a drunk to a cab. I opened the passenger door and shoved him in the seat. His chin hit his chest, which was stained with the blood pouring from his nose.

  I got in the driver’s side, backed up, and drove out of the lot.

  Durant moaned as I drove several blocks until I found a relatively quiet zone. I parked at the curb.

  “How you feeling?” I said.

  In a wheezy voice Durant said, “What’re you gonna do?”

  I grabbed a hunk of his thick, sticky hair and jerked his head up.

  “I’m going to give you a chance to live,” I said.

  His eyes fluttered. “Whu?”

  I turned his head toward me, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “You’ve got one chance. Tell me about your operation at Elias. All of it.”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “Wrong answer.” I squeezed the hair in my fist.

  “Stop!”

  “Goodbye, Danny.”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” His eyes were as big as tires now. “I used to. But not anymore. Not for a couple years.”

  “You moved on to greener pastures?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  When he didn’t answer, I put my left hand hard on his neck and began to squeeze.

  “Wait!”

  “Hurry it up,” I said.

  “I got told to back off,” Danny said.

  “Who told you?”

  “I don’t know. I just know…”

  “Go on.”

  “They killed my dog.”

  I let go of him.

  He tried to breathe in deep. He touched his nose with the back of his hand. “You broke it.”

  “I want a name, a lead. Anything. I want to find out who’s trafficking at Elias. You know more than you’re telling me.”

  “I just want to be left alone, you know? I got another territory.”

  “You and your enforcer.”

  “So what?”

  “You’re a drug dealer, Danny. You know how low on the scum ladder that is?”

  “You’re not a cop, what do you care?”

  “No man is an island.”

  “What the… what does that even mean?”

  “It’s from a poem. It means any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

  His look was uncomprehending. Thanks, public schooling.

  “Here’s what I mean,” I said. “I don’t like what you do. It’s a net negative in life. We’ve got enough negatives. If I kill you, it will move the needle the other way, toward the positive. That’s the way I’m leaning now.”

  “Oh, man, come on—”

  “So you give me a lead, and make it a good one, because I know how to find you.”

  “Please, don’t.”

  “A name,” I said.

  “I don’t know!”

  I moved my hand back to his throat.

  “Wait!” he said. “Let me think.”

  “You do that.”

  “I can’t think with your hand there.”

  I took my hand away.

  He breathed in and out a couple of times. “Look,” he said, “the
only name I can think of is Shibuk.”

  “That’s a name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “First or last?”

  “I don’t know. I only know Shibuk.”

  “How do you spell it?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Who is this guy?” I said.

  “Some kind of accountant. A numbers guy. He might know about Elias.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s connected, that’s all I know. Out in the Valley.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me?”

  “You gotta believe me.”

  “Why do I gotta? You’re a scum.”

  “Quit saying that.”

  “Scum.”

  “That’s all I know. I swear.”

  “Your swearing does not carry any weight,” I said. “But for some odd reason I believe you.”

  His body visibly relaxed. “Thank you, man.”

  “Now you can thank me for saving your soul.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re out of the drug business,” I said.

  “Wait, what?”

  “I don’t want to find out that you’re peddling dust, or anything else.”

  His mouth opened. No words came out.

  “If I find out otherwise,” I said, “I’m going to track you down and this time there won’t be any talking. Instead, I’ll gut you like a haddock. Have you ever seen a gutted haddock?”

  A slow shake of the head.

  “Guts all over the place,” I said. “You step on them and slide all over. Really, it’s quite unattractive. Am I getting through to you?”

  “I don’t know anything anymore. Look at me. Look at my car.”

  “No, you look at me. You see the severity in my look?”

  “The what?”

  “Severity.”

  “What the h—”

  “It means very serious, and in a very bad way.”

  “All right. You told me.”

  “But I don’t get the feeling you believe me.”

  “Oh man, just let me go now.”

  “All right, Danny.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Just one more thing.”

  I almost felt bad doing it. Almost. I gave him a left fist to the zygoma, otherwise known as the cheekbone. He slumped, his head thunking against the window. He would be out for some time, at least long enough for me to walk back to get my car.