by Riley, A. M.
was La Eme, man.”
“Call her,” I commanded.
He looked startled. “What?”
I dug out the prepaid and handed it to him. And that's when the black-
and-white rounded the corner at the end of the street. They recognized the blue
Caddy immediately, and a loop of light illuminated the backseat. Goddammit. If
I were the uniformed officer now pronouncing instructions over the car's
speaker, I'd figured I'd just busted a buy.
“You go east, I'll go west,” I said to Freeway. “Meet me back here in an
hour or I'll have your ass.”
Freeway slid across the seat, threw open the door, and practically fell into
the road, feet already moving. Then he veered east, as I had instructed and,
white soles of his sneakers flashing, took off across Hollenbeck. I hopped over
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the hood of the Caddy and through a set of bushes and across a front yard,
heading west. The cruiser emitted another bloop of sound and then I could
hear the distinct crunch of pavement and grit beneath running boots, heading
away, toward Freeway.
I glanced back as I ran and saw Freeway make for a low fence, put a hand
on it, and hurdle it gracefully, one uniformed cop in pursuit behind him.
Nobody seemed to be following me and I got to the back fence of the house
whose driveway I'd run up, aware again of my body responding in a way it
hadn't since before the corps. I clambered a couple feet and jumped the six-foot
fence easily, landing in a single entrance cul de sac. And then a cruiser pulled
into my path at the mouth of the road. Fuck, the partner had circled in the
black-and-white and cut me off. I looked behind me and realized that I'd just
jumped into a trap. He was already out of the car, holster open and hand on
the butt of his gun. So I stopped dead, hands in the air. “I'm a police officer,” I
announced, without thinking.
He didn't even blink. They must hear that a lot. “Identification?” he said.
Oh. Yeah. “I forgot it,” I said, feeling as lame as I sounded. I saw the shift
in his attitude. The increased readiness. My heart sank. How could I explain
any of this without making it known that Peter had kept my undead state a
secret?
I followed his instructions and stood before one of his headlights, my
hands on the hood of the car, while he patted me down finding, of course, the
Smith & Wesson with a particularly fierce joy.
“I can explain,” I said, as he emptied the chambers and placed the gun
about two feet before me on the hood of the car. “Okay, I'm not a cop, but I'm a
CI,” I said. “I have a license for that, but it's with my ID.”
Watching me, he called in the information. Then he stood and waited for
them to check for any local reports of a “6 feet 4 Hispanic male, about forty,
muscular build, seen in the Hollenbeck Park area.” I'm actually Italian by
descent, but black hair and mocha skin in Los Angeles always reads as
Immortality is the Suck
37
Hispanic, whether you're Iranian, Indian, or just have a great tan. The cop
said, “So tell me why you and your friend ran.”
“Because look where the fuck we are, man. Wouldn't you run?”
Dispatch reported something back to him and I knew by the way he
looked at me, and the code he enunciated into the hand mike, that suspects
somewhere matched my description. Hell, half of Boyle Heights would. There'd
be another unit here any minute.
What I did next was just plain stupid.
I ran. Scooped the gun up off the hood of the car, and ran.
Something about near death did a body good. I ran like a veritable
cheetah, got to the fence I'd come over, jumped it in ONE JUMP and pretty
soon I was rounding the corner, keys out of my pocket, and leaping into the
Cadillac before any officers had yet to appear in my rearview mirror. I peeled
out.
Up on the freeway, tires screaming, I could hear sirens everywhere. No
idea where anyone was coming from, so I just kept heading north, took the 10
interchange, exited, circled under, up on the 110. The East LA interchange is a
knot of freeways and interlapping neighborhoods. All around me I could hear
sirens, see the scanning lights from helicopters.
I pulled off the freeway below Mount Washington and pushed the Caddy
up hairpin turns till I got to the top where I knew a house, half pitched off the
cliff and former home to a Mongol soldier, currently stood empty. The gate gave
way to the grille of the Caddy, and I parked the car under a tree laden with
bougainvillea. Then I ran around the foot-wide space next to the home until I
could perch my ass on the narrow garden wall in back. Pele and his old lady
and I used to hang out and watch the fireworks over Dodger Stadium from
here. I sat and watched the LAPD try to locate me.
A couple of hours passed. I can be patient when it's necessary. Like, when
I'm being hunted. After a while, I could see the place settling down, helicopters
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A. M. Riley
circling back toward more immediate issues on the freeways, and unis sent off
to more urgent calls.
As I backed the Caddy out, broken bougainvillea and jasmine branches
fell from it, their odor so fragrant it sickened me and I had to stop the car to
clear them away. Weird. Then I circled the back streets for half an hour or so. I
sent two “call me” text messages to Freeway, but he didn't respond.
Like a skulking shark, I cruised back and forth toward the park, and then
I parked the car three blocks away and snuck back down to Hollenbeck. The
moon had risen and sat high and full at three o'clock, so I figured we were
rolling around three hours and if Freeway hadn't been arrested, he should be
waiting for me inside.
The first clue that something was wrong was the door, unlocked and ajar.
The second was the distinct smell of blood. Do you want to hear how the smell
made my mouth water? No? Fine then, I won't tell you.
I pulled out the Smith & Wesson, no more useful than a paperweight
without the bullets, but it could give me the second I'd need to jump back if
there was someone waiting on the other side of the door. I slid around the door
frame and into the room. The place had that absolute silence that seems to
surround the dead and sure enough, on the floor by a workbench, there lay a
body.
My plans to beat the truth out of Leonard Chavez, a.k.a Freeway, had
been circumvented by his untimely murder.
I scanned the room quickly, but I already knew I was alone with Freeway's
corpse. That same sense that allowed me to smell blood, to know he was dead,
also informed me that no other living creatures were close by. I shoved the gun
back into my belt and stood looking down at him.
Freeway had put on some bulk since that summer he'd won the
skateboard championship. His beefy neck twisted sideways, showing two
blackened holes and dried blood. His head lay in a pool of the same blood; his
T-shirt was rucked up at the bottom, where a shallow knife wound showed.
Immortality is the Suck
39
A disturbin
g sense of regret tried to manifest in my chest. A flash of
memory. Freeway's mama making me sopa in her kitchen one evening.
Freeway had traveled a bit more than a lot of kids his age, making it as far
as Venice Beach, which was more than a lot of Latino East Enders ever
managed in their lifetimes. He'd never graduated from high school, hadn't even
finished out his probation. He had managed, however, to marry and produce
an heir. Not necessarily in that order. Divorced. Killed a man in cold blood.
And now his body was lying in a dark equipment shed with two gaping
wounds in the neck. He was twenty-two years old.
I suppose you could argue that this had always been Freeway's fate; that,
given his actions and background, he was destined to die young and violently
in East Los Angeles. Many members of the Mongols accepted the likelihood of
their probably violent ends. Still, it was one thing to take a bullet for a brother;
it was another to be ritualistically slain by some psycho. I'd been part of the
club long enough to feel the outrage and desire for revenge that any Mongol
would feel in my position.
And then there was the likelihood that Freeway's murder and mine were
connected. That somebody, out there, knew a helluva lot more than I would
want them to.
There was anger, and a burning predatorial urge in my belly. Fight or
flight pounding in my temples. Tension in all my muscles, I could smell the
blood and death and it didn't disgust me, it ramped me up. It sent adrenaline
through my blood and a sharp focus into my brain. It put me into the zone.
I looked around, trying to quickly assess what had happened. The room
was dark, but a blue luminosity filled it. It occurred to me, in some statistically
cool part of my brain, that this was exactly what the darkened morgue had
looked like. Perhaps near death experiences endowed one with the ability to see
in the dark? Whatever. I could see every detail as I stood there.
There was a large rectangular clear patch near Freeway's body where, it
seemed, crate-sized objects had been stored long enough to let dust settle
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around them. Scuff and drag marks and dozens of footprints were all around
the area. I tried to avoid the thick of the prints as I circled, looking around.
One of the workbenches, with a dismembered skateboard on it, has been
shoved out of kilter, and a couple of skateboard wheels and a screwdriver had
spilled onto the floor. Dark stains on the bench that I knew were blood by the
smell. Yes, you read that correctly.
And speaking of smells, now I was picking up that there was something
there besides Freeway's blood. Something with a different…tone is the only
word I can think of to describe it. It was like I could suddenly discern shades of
color in smells. So, I followed my nose, as they say, and there, behind the
bench and a subwall that had been used to hang tools, was a crate about the
size of a soda twelve-pack. The top was already loose. I used my shirt as a glove
and lifted the lid by one corner.
A compact plastic container, its sides insulated and its interior filled with
ice. The ice packed firm and still very cold around what at first appeared to be
half gallon white plastic milk bottles. I counted four. Each round white cap was
numbered and dated in neat black Magic Marker. However long they'd been
there, they were still ice-cold to the touch. Given Freeway's role with the
Mongols and the fact that he'd died with this in his possession, I assumed this
was some sort of new drug. I had no idea what drug it could be, though.
There'd been absolutely no whisper of it on the street. So I popped the top of
one and peered into the container. Ruby red and… I sniffed and immediately I
knew what it was. What it was, how old it was, how great it would taste going
down.
I set the container down abruptly, and backed right into the bench.
What the fuck was going on?
Because those were cartons of blood there.
Now, I've craved a few substances in my lifetime. Coke, meth, Peter's ass.
You know what I mean. But I've never wanted anything like I suddenly wanted
that blood.
Immortality is the Suck
41
I realized I was breathing hard. Sweating. The ravenous hunger in my gut
suddenly solved. This was what I needed. What I'd been craving. I couldn't have
explained why, but I HAD to do it. I picked up the opened container. I lifted it
to my lips. I drank the blood.
Oh. MY. God. It was the best thing I'd ever tasted in my life. I staggered
back against the workbench, holding myself up. It was like meth or horse,
without the nasty side effects. It was just good. God-awful, blessed,
thankyouJEEsus good. I closed my eyes and felt the stuff surge like white
candy-coated bliss through my brain.
The first rush passed and I felt bright and alive. Hard. And filled with a
sudden intense need to move.
Some part of me was counting on its fingers. Some slithering, hissing
serpent in my brain told me to grab the blood, stuff it into the trunk of the
Caddy, and run. I didn't even stop to consider my actions. I stuffed the carton
back into the case, lifted it, and ran out the door of the equipment shed,
dodging from shadow to shadow across the park, until I got to the Caddy. I
popped the trunk, put the crate inside under some rags Peter kept there. My
brain was focused and clear and all it would tell me was that I had to hide the
stuff so nobody could find it. So nobody could take it away from me. I was like
that Gollum character with the ring. “Mine mine mine.”
I was halfway back to Peter's place before I'd even taken time to think.
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Chapter Six
Peter lay almost exactly as I had found him.
I sat on the bed next to him. His back rose and fell slowly, that one freckle
on his shoulder blade riding the swell like a ship on the sea. The rush of
adrenaline and rage that had followed drinking the blood had an element of
lust as well, and I wanted to lick his freckle.
I had enough presence of mind, though, to know that I was sweaty and
probably bloody. I'd dribbled a bit from the carton down the front of the
sweatshirt, and God knew what my face looked like. So I opted for a shower
instead.
I sing in the shower.
I lathered up and launched into “Der Rosenkavalier” for a good ten
minutes, using most of a bar of Peter's deodorant soap, my fingers slithering
down around my hard cock and then slithering back up as I fantasized about
just what my cock would be doing in a few minutes to Peter's ass. You get
older, you learn. Yeah, even me. Sometimes waiting is half the fun.
I scrubbed a towel over my hair, wrapped another around my hips and
stepped out into the hallway, clouds of steam issuing with me.
“Hold it right there.”
Peter, in boxers, sleep-sticky hair askew all over his head. Bright red face
and blue eyes staring, holding a Glock trained right at my head.
I raised my hands and dropped the towel.
Peter's a rock in a crisis. But, obviously
he still thought I was dead.
Because he screamed and jumped and the gun went off. Happily he thought to
Immortality is the Suck
43
jerk his arm sideways as it did so, so a bit of molding flew through the air
instead of half my brains.
“I know you've warned me not to use all the hot water,” I said. “But don't
you think that's a little extreme?”
* * * * *
Well, it took a while to peel Peter off the wall where he'd plastered himself,
babbling like something possessed for all of ten minutes. And then I had to
make him stop slapping himself in a pathetic attempt to wake up from what he
thought was a horrible dream. I got him propped up in a chair in the living
room, and then we had a conversation that went something like this:
“You're dead.” His eyes went teary. Christ.
“Touch me,” I said.
He did. His hand warm on my upper arm. My cock, once more safely
buried under the towel, raised its head in interest.
Peter's lower lip sort of trembled. “I saw you die.”
“Well, here I am, so…”
“No, you're dead.”
“I'm sitting right here!”
“But I saw you. You were dead. They zipped up the body bag.”
“Obviously, medical science still has a lot to learn.”
Peter buried his head in his hands. “My head is splitting open.”
So, I went to make some coffee. When I came back, he took the cup
without comment and sipped at it. And I took the opportunity to just sit back
and enjoy looking at him. À la dishabille, as they say.
Even unshaven, his dark blond hair looking like he'd combed it with a
blender, Peter was a handsome man. And he was across from me in nothing
but his boxer shorts. That hard body with its golden fur all over it was more
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and more of a distraction. “Wait a minute.” Peter pointed at me. “Your neck
had two holes in it as wide as my thumb.”
“It did?” The disturbing image of Freeway's corpse flashed in my mind's