Moses doesn’t really care now though. He slams Legacy against the car again.
“Oww! Dude! Fine! I see the guy every now and then, sell him some X or weed.”
“That all?”
“We surf a little. He can get me in the good clubs and the best tail. Man likes his comfort and fun. Dude! I wouldn’t lie to you!”
“You know more.” Moses kicks the car.
“He’s got something going down on Memorial Day on Monday. Don’t know where, don’t know what. C’mon, man! You’re hurtin’ me!”
Moses releases him and and starts to leave, but then changes his mind and takes the CD out of the stereo and breaks it in half, figuring it’s his good deed of the day, maybe the week.
It’s the next afternoon when he strikes gold.
THIRD PROTOCOL: LEARN WHAT THEY HAVE
It’s Memorial Day weekend and Mission Beach is hopping. There’s an estimated crowd of 800,000 people filling the beach, both local and tourist. Moses loves tourists. They always dress wrong for the beach and think just because it’s San Diego it doesn’t get cold. This May weekend is a somewhat cold one as San Diego’s sun takes its rare coffee-and-cigarette break before coming back with a vengeance in the later summer months. Moses likes the kayakers and wannabe surfers best who return to land like they just got back from storming 1944 Normandy; they have this great shell-shocked look on their faces and their eyes are wide and terrified. It’s like Apocalypse Now, “The horror …” Those who don’t bother with a wet suit are the best.
So Moses hears the mugging before he sees it, and only because he catches the name Teddy. He’s leaving his humble little condo for another day of chasing pavement, and after looking around for the source of the voice he sees this big guy cornering a pretty girl in an alley out of sight from the crowds. Moses recognizes him as a local thug and your garden-variety bully, so he hurries over.
“Leave the lady alone, Vinnie.”
Vinnie McBride smirks and steps away from the girl and gets close to Moses. They’re about the same build, but Vinnie has size on Moses from steroids and being a gym rat.
“You gonna make me, nigger?”
Vinnie always did have a talent for making situations worse for himself.
“Guess I gotta, Vinnie.” And Moses kicks him in the nuts. It’s a good ball-shot that should have sent the guy clear across the 5 into El Cajon, but he’s a ’roid freak and gets back up and rushes Moses, who dodges just in time and kicks him in the shin. Catching Vinnie as he stumbles, Moses shoves him into the wall and tosses him into a dumpster, slamming the lid shut. Vinnie will be napping for a while.
The racial slur just makes the fight a happier experience for Moses and he likes the location. Alleys are narrow, lots of hard edges, and usually a dumpster to dispose your trash, and the day he can’t take on a street thug like Vinnie is the day he walks off Crystal Pier and drowns himself.
Moses walks over to the girl. She’s about 5'8” with long, messy black hair that looks unwashed and eyes the color of melting butterscotch. She has a heart-shaped mouth and her nose is slightly bent like it’s been broken once or twice in her life. She’s wearing a wrinkled, red summer dress and scuffed sneakers. Moses guesses she’s in her late twenties.
“My name is Moses Johnson. You okay?”
“Yeah, I think so. Not like I haven’t been roughed up before.” He doesn’t like her laugh, it’s too harsh, and he hears it on too many young girls these days. “Thank you though. My name is Hope. I don’t have any money …”
“Money’s not necessary, just doing what was right. Can I buy you an ice cream? I know a place on the boardwalk that makes a mean cheesecake on a stick.”
“I’d like that. Guys usually want to buy me a drink, get me drunk.” She smiles ruefully and smoothes out her dress.
“Doc told me if I kept drinking my liver would mutate into something out of a Godzilla movie that would stomp on the city.”
Hope laughs and it’s a better one with more life to it, and as she calms down he thinks he can hear Texas in her voice. It’s a short walk on the boardwalk from the south end where he lives by the bay, where most people own their condos. It’s more sedate than the north end where all the rentals and college kids live, but close enough that you can always hear the buzz of activity from the beach, Moses’s favorite thing in the whole world is taking Summer to Belmont Park and doing all the games and riding the Giant Dipper.
Moses and Hope arrive at Sweet Treats and he orders them two chocolate-covered cheesecakes on a stick and they sit on a bench along the boardwalk. She licks her cheesecake and her face lights up in pleasure. He wonders when the last time was that she had a hot meal.
“What was that all about?” Moses asks.
“Why should I tell you? How do I know you didn’t just beat up Vinnie so you can bring me back to Teddy yourself to get paid?”
“You don’t know that, it’s true. What I can tell you is that by the look of your dress and hair, you’ve been living in a car for at least a week and haven’t eaten well for a while. That won’t be the last Vinnie you encounter. Whatever you’re running away from, it’s bad. Pretty soon thugs won’t be paid to bring you back, they’ll just shoot you.” Leedom always said that sometimes the hard truth is better with a potential witness or informant.
He can tell she hadn’t considered that. She looks like she’s suffering from exhaustion and stress and can’t think straight. She starts to shake and he steadies her. “What’s so special about Teddy?” she whispers.
“I’ve been looking for Teddy. He owes me and my bosses some money.”
“Teddy owes a lot of people money. He likes to bet. Who do you work for?”
Moses tells her and she blinks in surprise.
“Well, I didn’t know he owed them money. Porn is a license to print money, I should know. He’s a greedy little bastard.”
Moses shows her his ID card and, not by accident, a picture of his daughter. Most people trust a parent. Leedom always said to use every tool. “I can help you; I’ve caught a lot of bad guys in my time.”
She studies him for a moment and smiles at the photo. “I don’t really know where to start.”
“Why not the basics first? What is it you do, Hope?”
“I was a star, honey. Lotta films in L.A. My name is Hope Love—you never heard of me?”
“I don’t watch much porn, honestly. It gets kinda boring.”
She smiles almost shyly and leans back. “Mama was a hippie, hence the name Hope. I was your average girl from East Texas. Homecoming queen. Class president. Cheerleader. Goooo Panthers! I was at a concert in Austin when this dude approached me. I was a little high, he was a smooth talker. Said I deserved better than hicksville Texas and have I ever considered Los Angeles and making movies? Daddy was a preacher man and thought he could beat the sin out of me. I was just smart enough to know my life was already over and I’d probably marry right out of high school and be fat and drinking myself to death by thirty. It’s not like I was a virgin either. I was on a plane the next day. L.A. was a trip, man. I had never seen so many people. Anyway. It’s always the same story, agents won’t see you, so you get desperate. I agreed to some nude pictures, and it’s not a long slide to doing some freak on camera for four hundred bucks. You figure that’ll set you up for a nice start, until you realize that L.A. is a little bit more expensive than East Texas.”
“You did a lot of movies?” Moses asks, watching some kids run with a kite on the beach. It’s a nice windy day for it.
“Tons. Turns out I had a knack for it. I liked the money and the attention. And the kinkier stuff is where the green is. I made some good bank in a couple years. A ton of features for creepy men. That’s about how long most girls last if you don’t have a major production company behind you. Turns out the smooth guy I met wasn’t a player. I wasn’t fresh anymore. Couldn’t get a deal with the big guys. I looked tired. Everyone had done me. So I started doing gonzo and reality.”
; “I’m already lost. Gonzo? Reality?”
“Reality is, like, five minutes of plot. Home video stuff. Straight into the sex. It’s for the freaks. They can watch me sleep with a regular guy as a cheerleader or even a teacher. I was good at it, but gonzo is where the real money is. It’s the crazy stuff.”
Hope pauses to take a bite of her cheesecake and smiles at a little girl running with a puppy on the beach.
“This is wonderful. Anyway, you rationalize it. I can make the rent for the next two months if a couple guys do me at once. Slammed against a wall and punched? Bruises fade and the green makes up for it. Sodomy and rape simulation, you start telling yourself, isn’t that bad. I even did gay-for-pay for a while when people started getting tired of watching me get humiliated. You really never heard of me? That’s kinda sweet.”
They throw their trash away and start walking. The gray is melting away and the sun is peeking through. Hope raises her face to it and smiles.
“L.A. is a rough place. It shows you how ugly it can be, like it’s proud. Here is better.” She stares out into the ocean. “At least San Diego tries to cover up the ugly.”
“How’d you get here?”
“Last year I was preparing to get it on with a midget lady. Hell of a way to turn twenty-eight, huh? That was when I decided to get out. For a laugh I tried to go legit as a sitcom actress, since a couple guys told me I was a good actress and I was dumb enough to believe them. I got beat out by this blond tart, which was literally what the part was, and now it’s the biggest sitcom on TV. I met Teddy at a party and he gave me the same line I got at seventeen, that I could have a better life. And like when I was seventeen, I believed it. We moved to San Diego and it was cool for a while; he did his Internet porn thing and the shoots were actually kinda classy and professional. I was his executive assistant, because I knew the business, and his live-in girlfriend. I loved the city. It’s not like L.A. where you can forget that there’s a beach, it’s everywhere here. It’s the culture. You can actually see the sun. It’s what Texans think of when they imagine California. Like I said, though, San Diego is good at hiding its ugly. Teddy started moving us around a lot, had a bunch of secret phone calls and meetings with creepy men in suits. I heard some things, read his e-mail. I had to get out of there. Teddy’s a respected member of society, gives to charities, has a couple boats, several houses. Lots of powerful friends. Who was I going to turn to for help? I’m just a washed-up fuck star. ”
Hope watches a father chase his squealing child across the sand. Volleyball players run around yelling for others to get the ball. Teenage girls giggle and gossip as they sneak glances at the bronzed surfers heading out into the water.
“I like you, Moses. If I thought you weren’t a good guy, I’d ask if you wanted to be with me tonight.”
He blushes. “Hope, what did you find out about Teddy?”
She turns to him, and she’s all serious now, tears in those amazing butterscotch eyes. “You gotta help me. This is bad. Really, really bad.”
So she tells him everything.
She tells him about Memorial Day.
She tells him about the empty houses with the filthy mattresses.
She tells him about the smuggling.
She tells him about the filmed rapes.
She tells him about the Moving Black Objects.
FOURTH PROTOCOL: EXECUTE WHAT THEY FEAR
It’s Memorial Day at nine a.m. and the sun is shining down and the streets are packed full. Restaurants are at maximum capacity and lifeguards are on edge since so many people are in the water. You pretty much have to sacrifice a virgin to find parking. The perfect weather is why everyone pays such a high price: paradise ain’t cheap. Getting drunk and laid is everyone’s goal, not honoring those who fell in combat. Hardly anyone notices the van pull into a lonely alley and unload a group of Muslim women in burkas and hurry them inside the small red house.
Moses and Hope had spent the weekend going over the details of Teddy’s scheme, and he has to admit it’s sort of slick. “Teddy thinks this is patriotic what he’s doing. He thinks he’s saving American lives,” Hope had told him the night before. Teddy, like most of America, had totally freaked when the Twin Towers went down and became a 9/12 conservative. Normal on 9/10, scared to death on 9/11, and ready to kick some ass in revenge on 9/12. At first he had donated large amounts of his fortune to the war effort in Iraq and any politician hungry for Muslim blood, but that wasn’t enough. Like everyone, he saw the torture scandals on the news, but instead of being sickened, he saw opportunity. He hooked up with his old roommate, Councilman Douglas Penter; Douglas introduced him to his uncle, Agent Jack Penter of the CIA. Teddy told them his idea and they too saw opportunity.
Muslim women were smuggled in; Councilman Penter had the right people look the other way, and Judge Clark Penter took care of the rest. The women were taken to houses secured by Mrs. Helena Penter and raped. The brutality was filmed and sent to secret CIA prisons and shown to whomever the hell they suspected of terrorism or had alleged ties to terrorism, as a way to get them talking. Teddy sold copies on the pervert black market.
It’s a beautiful world.
So Moses, Hope, and a swarm of FBI agents are closing in on the little red house on this gorgeous San Diego morning where you just know there’s a God, and Moses feels pumped. It’s been a long time since he’s seen action like this and taken down a real bad guy. He remembers what Hope had told him the night before, that Teddy’s terrified of losing his status in high society, but more importantly, all his stuff. Moses can’t wait to get his hands on the man.
“You ready?” asks his buddy, Special Agent Brooks Fairley, who looks more like a surfer than a G-man.
“Born. Let’s kill this bitch.” Moses grins and their small army kicks in the door.
Instant chaos. It’s an abandoned house with a slim brownskinned woman on a dirty mattress and five others in black burkas handcuffed to a pipe. Moving Black Objects. Not real women to Teddy and his partners. It’s old military slang to dehumanize them in order to make it easier if you have to kill one of them.
Legacy is on top of the terrified girl on the filthy mattress and it’s being filmed by a fat guy with one hand simultaneously on his crotch. Multitasking. Teddy is in the corner laughing and chatting it up with some shady-looking guys in suits. Teddy’s an attractive man with curly black hair and classic Roman features. He’s almost prettier than handsome. Moses bets the guys in suits are spooks. The men scatter when the door is slammed open and Fairley’s men with their guns drawn come streaming in like a murder of crows. Through the confusion, Moses can hear Legacy yelp as Fairley throws him against a wall a little too roughly, and it warms his heart and he makes a mental note to buy Fairley a beer when this is over. Summer tends to the women.
Moses sees Teddy slip out the back and races after him.
Moses is fast for his age and size, but Teddy’s a younger guy by about a decade and he slips easily onto the crowded boardwalk. They push through fat and pale tourists. Teddy shoves a little girl to the ground and she starts crying. The reggae street band orchestrates the chase. “Ramble Tamble” is blasting out of Kojak’s. Moses can’t let him make it to the parking lot or Teddy will be out of his reach for good, so he steps it up, and in a last ditch effort, like throwing a TD pass from his football days, he hurls his attaché case at Teddy, who stumbles at the sudden impact. Moses grins in triumph and soon has Teddy in a headlock, moving back to the authorities.
“That bitch rat me out? You stop this operation of ours, American soldiers and American citizens will continue to get killed by the rag-heads!” Teddy gasps.
“Teddy, her name is Hope and she’s a smart girl who I’m going to help get a good job downtown. No, what screwed you is cheating on your taxes. Holding back on your 941s was cute since it’s the welfare of your employees, and not you, but the geeks in auditing caught it. You owe me thousands of dollars, asshole. You should have known that the IRS always gets their man.
As a bonus, I get to see the Penters burn. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, it’s a great day to go to jail.”
PART IV
BOUNDARIES & BORDERS
THE ROADS
BY GABRIEL R. BARILLAS
Del Mar
Roads. That’s what everyone thinks about when you mention Southern California. The locals are obsessed by their roads and their epic traffic. Everyone has a shortcut and a hundred horror stories of hours spent crossing town on a rainy day. But during the summer, nobody minds if the beach roads are stopped. The cars and streets are filled with young beautiful people wearing not much at all.
San Diego is the most southern part of Southern California, but there aren’t that many roads. There’s Interstate 5, the long ribbon that runs the entire length of California’s farmland and great cities. The 5 effectively bottoms out in San Diego, where it hits Mexico. You get the picture. Not too many places to go when you get here. San Diego is a repository for detritus that falls off Interstate 5. Nobody is truly from San Diego. Everyone came from somewhere else.
The hundred-mile drive from L.A. to San Diego is beautiful. Halfway down from L.A. you hit Camp Pendleton and the Pacific Ocean appears as you pass the sprawl of San Clemente. I drove past ritzy towns like La Jolla, Rancho Santa Fe, and Del Mar, but after only a few days of living here, I noted one thing. Behind its slick and sunny veneer, San Diego can’t escape the fact that it’s a border town. I quickly learned that late night in downtown San Diego can be quite a grab bag of adventures. Drug cartel members take busman’s holidays here. Human traffickers set up bases and patiently wait for the time to be right so they can move their cargo north. Drunken sailors and marines litter the streets, on leave for the weekend, and in their wake follow the whores, both male and female, a tribute to the diversity of our military. The Gaslamp Quarter, the developed section of downtown and the pride of San Diego, rolls right into what some locals consider the seedy side of town. This was the San Diego that I came to call home.
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