by Blackie Noir
Swinging out the cylinder, Nadine eyeballed the pill-sized backs of the eight .22 hollowpoints nesting within. Hopefully, should a dire situation arise, quantity will compensate for the .22’s lack of stopping power. After what Chuey Medina had done to her, she considered the firearm like American Express; she didn’t leave home without it. When she returned to duty Monday she’d be carrying the .22, in an ankle holster; as a back-up piece to her Beretta 9 millimeter. Replacing the revolver, she took out her running watch, strapped it to her wrist, zipped the fanny-pack shut, and buckled it around her waist. Spirits buoyed by the prospect of her run, Nadine headed for the kitchen and the rear door.
Approaching Puddin’ on her way out, she squatted down and scratched her under the chin, behind the ear. Now upbeat, Nadine said, “Hey girl, sorry about this morning’s gloomy little bitch fit. I’m putting myself through an attitude adjustment, starting right now. I get back from my run, you’re gonna be seeing the new, whoop-dee-do, me, OK?”
This time, the cat responded with a forceful meow and a flick of her tail, as she watched Nadine head out.
Chapter Eleven
Highway 1. Coast Highway to most Californians. Pacific Coast Highway to natives of Southern California. PCH to the denizens of Long Beach and bordering sea-side communities. Americans addicted to the glow of the cathode-ray tube, perhaps ninety percent of them, are familiar with the Coast Highway. They see it on a weekly basis. Glory in its vision. Dream; California dreamin’ bro, of its promises.
They see it: bathed in brilliant sunshine, stretching straight and true, the vast Pacific an azure backdrop for the sparkling beaches of Malibu on one side; lofty bluffs, wooded hills and canyons on the other.
They watch: golden haired, honey-tanned starlets, with mega-watt smiles, cruise down this highway to heaven, in their Corvettes, their Z-Cars.
They envy: cinematic super-stars, the gods and goddess that drive among us, weaving in and out at incredible speeds, in their Lamborghini’s, their Ferrari Enzos, taking for granted the carte blanche afforded to deities.
Fuck Disneyland, woman! This summer we’re loading up the kids, gonna check out that old Coast Highway. Cruise that sum-bitch, maybe Angelina will drive by, shoot me that big old smile. Maybe? Shit, it’s Coast Highway! No maybe about it.
Malibu too. Hell, it’s right on good old Coast Highway. Shit, them movie people? They live there! Just pull the old mini-van over, pop a cold one, scope out the beach. Wouldn’t be surprised, J-Lo strolled by, thong and all, shot me a moon. Coast Highway, buddy, anything can happen.
Anything can happen, but, should you not be amongst the chosen few, the icons, you’d best not tarry. The Coast Highway of your big-screen HD-TV induced fantasies doesn’t exist, at least not for you. For you the highway is just that, a thoroughfare. It’ll take you from point A to point B, no problem; if you keep moving, don’t go over fifty, and above all, don’t try to mingle with your idols.
However, should you be of stern enough stuff to survive your shattered dreams, you may find parts of the Coast Highway that will gladly welcome you with open arms. Some stretches may even provide the comfort of familiarity. If you’re driving north from Malibu you will see some magnificent scenery, if you’re artistically inclined it will bring a tear to your eye. If your Range Rover is new, and your American Express is paid up, you’ll be more than welcome in Carmel or Santa Barbara.
Still, not everyone feels comfortable in that type of environment, nor finds it affordable. If you had to take out a loan, just to make the trip, and you like to dunk your Cheetos in your Lucky Lager, that doesn’t mean all of the Coast Highway is determined to snub you. Forget up north. Yes, forget Malibu too. Clean air, bright blue sky, sparkling surf, golden sunshine? All vastly overrated. Just like movie-star pussy.
What you need to do, make a U-turn and head south. Might want to put a quart of oil in the van, top off your radiator while your at it. Wont be much of that cool sea-breeze where you’re headed. Oh, it’s still Coast Highway, even though at that point they just call it PCH and it’s a couple of miles inland. But, ain’t nobody gonna snub you on PCH down in Long Beach.
In fact, if you made the trip all the way from the east coast, Jersey perhaps, you’ll experience a little deja-vu. On the way south to Long Beach, PCH bisects the city of Wilmington, where you can close your eyes, take a deep breath, and think you’re sailing down the NJT, past the oil refineries, westward-ho, and out of Jersey. If the kids have been napping, should happen to wake up, they’re gonna be pissed. Seeing themselves surrounded by refineries, tall stacks burning off excess natural gas, and beige colored air, they won’t believe it. Six days on the road and they never made it out of Jersey.
Not to worry. They’ll calm down soon as they clear the refineries, see they won’t be missing out on America’s primo cuisine. Hey, might as well be home. We got MacDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, with plenty of strip-malls in between. Yeah, mom and the kids are feeling better already. But, how bout dad?
Hang on, something for everyone. Hell, it’s PCH. Make it past the housing projects and the abandoned, boarded-up military housing, the tool houses, transmission shops, check cashing joints, and myriad liquor stores, you’ll hit an overpass, just after you cross the Long Beach Freeway, find yourself crossing the Los Angeles River.
No sea-shore here bud. No wooded hills. Not much of a river either. Concrete. If you’re a country boy, you won’t be looking at the rivers of your youth. What you’ll see is a harsh, concrete lined, slope-walled, gorge more akin to a roadway than a river bed. Water? Sure, it is a river, right? See that there? That trickle? Don’t laugh, that’s it. There, at the center, twelve-fifteen feet wide, maybe a foot or two deep. That’s your LA river. Nine months a year.
The other three months, winter months, you’ve got an entirely different animal. When winter storms flood the concrete channel, a vicious animal. If you’ve got an El Nino condition that winter you’ve got a raging beast. A liquid killer. Billions of gallons of water, furiously rushing at high speed, gaining force and momentum as its dozen tributaries add their flow to its ever increasing volume. In the course of its fifty-plus miles the rampant torrent will gather up any and all debris in its path, be it organic or inorganic.
Abandoned automobiles. Appliances: refrigerators, washers, dryers, TV’s, air-conditioners. The flotsam and jetsam of a megalopolis. Not all of this flood driven wreckage is inanimate, including some of its less fortunate citizenry.
The homeless, taking shelter beneath the river’s many overpasses. Some; junkies, winos, and crackheads. Others; dealt a cruel hand by mother-nature herself, never needed the help of chemicals to fry their already burnt cerebral jelly into further malfunction. Still others, plain folk who by an unfortunate twist of fate have lost all, reduced to the basics. Food. Shelter from the storm.
Any and all, the river doesn’t discriminate.
Looking down at the river from the Pacific Coast Highway crossing, you’ll be looking at the final two miles of the waterway before it spills into San Pedro Bay. The wild and wooly two miles. The two miles where concrete’s rule has been usurped. Usurped by vegetation; small trees, large shrubs, reeds, and swamp grasses. Damn, if it doesn’t look like . . . a river!
Two miles, out of fifty-one, left unpaved. Since the thirties, when the LA river flood control project was undertaken, decades of silt and vegetation have been carried downstream to settled here at river’s end. The result, a jungle. A jungle surrounded by industry: railways, factories, warehouses, the beginnings of the Alameda industrial corridor.
As soon as you cross the river, heading south-east, you’ll see a driveway on your right. It’s a long one, but, should you choose to hazard its cracked concrete and gravel, you’ll find yourself approaching another jungle. Fronting an enormous parking lot, its rearmost boundary the overgrown riverbank, is JuicyTown.
JuicyTown, a jungle of an altogether different stripe.
Chapter Twelve
J
uicyTown Club.
Long Beach, California.
Six. Definitely six. Six small golden hoops. Course, Ray Bob, the fuckin idiot, was giving him an argument. Wolf shook his head, but Ray Bob wouldn’t let it go.
“Seven, Wolf. Damn, simple arithmetic. Three, three, and one. Seven.”
Exasperated, Wolf reached over and grabbed Ray Bob by the back of his neck, pulled him close, and put his mouth right on Ray Bob’s ear. Wolf wasn’t about to yell himself hoarse trying to override Kid Rock’s ‘Cowboy,’ blaring out of the stripclub’s over-amped sound system.
“Six, Ray Bob. Three and three. You don’t count the one on her clit.”
“Shit. Why not?”
“It don’t match. Different size.”
“No way.”
“Listen to me. Last two nights, I’ve spent over a hundred bucks checking that bitch’s shaved twat out. The tattoo is a demon’s face, mouthful of teeth wide open, around her pussy-lips. Them lips are made to look like the demon’s tongue. Now, the rings? Three through the lip on each side. They’re matched. Same fuckin’ size. Clit ring? Tiny. Ain’t half the size of the others.”
Ray Bob pulled away, finished his beer, “Bullshit.”
Deciding to put an end to what could be an hour of repetitious back and forth with the damn nitwit, Wolf grabbed a ten from his bills on the bar. Waving the bill overhead he called out, “Yo! Hey! Satana. Shake it on over honey. I got somethin’ for ya.”
Satana, a tired and well worn booty shaker; never a prom queen but not yet a total crank-skank, closing in on forty faster than a starving cheetah can run down a gazelle, hip-slinks her bony way down the stage to Wolf. Seeing the bill is a ten, Satana gives its bearer a tight-lipped grin. Years of crystal-meth abuse have played havoc with the dancers teeth. Gap-toothed, Satana doesn’t dare break out a full-bore smile.
Not a problem. The marks that constitute Satana’s, ever dwindling, fan-base aren’t here to see her smile. What still draws them in; allowing Satana to keep her gig here at JuicyTown in spite of her age, her gaunt appearance, and small, slightly withered, breasts, is the Demon Snatch.
The Demon Snatch: Shorn, tattooed, and sporting multiple piercings, Satana’s pussy is still her supreme asset. Some guys may no longer want to fuck it, but a lot of ‘em, sure as shit, are willing to pay, just to get a really close look at its bizarre accouterments.
Stick a buck in her G-string, and Satana will squat down in front of you, spread her legs, and jam her money-maker right in your face. If your eyes are good, you might be able to read the calligraphy scrolled between the demon’s horns, Abandon All Hope --- Ye Who Would Enter Here, right through her G-string’s thin, gauzy, material.
Five bucks and Satana pulls the flimsy G-string to one side. She’ll usually let you take your time, get an eyeful, providing you behave. That means no touching, or trying to stick currency in her honey-pot. Make any physical contact whatsoever, and any of the four huge sadists employed as bouncers will be happy to break your arm.
Of course, before they get to you, Satana may have already broken your own beer bottle over your head, or jammed a long, magenta, thumbnail into your eye.
Ten bucks. Now, ten bucks? That got you the first class tour. Still no touching, but, you got a lot more time to visually satisfy your curiosity. You also got a lot more light. Light, that was the ten dollar gimmick. Hanging from a lanyard around Satana’s wrist was a small flashlight. Once she had your tenspot, well, she was happy to put a little light on the subject.
The prime tour also bought you some patter from the proud owner of the ‘Demon Snatch.’ Although for the most part, Satana’s rap was pretty cut and dried, she did try to fit her spiel to whatever she thought the mark would be most receptive to.
For instance: An artistic dude? He would hear about the tattoo. Sharp dresser, fastidious? (rare, here at JuicyTown.) She would talk about the mechanics of shaving her pubes. Now, freaks? (probably 75% of JuicyTown’s clientele) Satana would agonizingly describe the excruciating pain undergone during her vaginal piercings. Major turn on for freaks.
This guy, the one just gave her a ten? Freak. Freak and a half. A freak’s freak.
Yuk. A fuckin’ reptile.
This was the third night in a row now. Oh, not that she minded all the fives and tens he had slipped her way. Not at all. What she minded was him.
Everything about him. That fucking android with him wasn’t much better. Still, obsessive as he was, he was helping to pay the bills. So. A girl’s gotta do, what a girl’s gotta do.
Shinning the light on her genitalia, flipping her clit ring with a fingernail, Satana said, “Honey? I ever tell you what it was like? What it was like getting this little beauty pierced? I mean . . .”
Not taking his eyes from her pussy, the man said, “Yeah. You have. I don’t need to hear it again. Fact is, you’re breaking my concentration.”
“Oh, I’m sooo sorry. Well, if you have any other questions . . .”
“Two. I got two.”
Hoping to set a hook, Satana flashed her stingy grin, “Cool. What are they?”
“Would you be so kind as to hold your light steady?”
“Sure. What’s the other one?”
“Think you could shut the fuck up?”
#
Confidence and power. That’s what it took. Wolf had a shitload of confidence. Hell, he wouldn’t have had Ray Bob, using a dart he had swiped from the bar, pierce his ears if he wasn’t confident. Both ears. Three holes left. Three holes right. That was confidence, getting the holes put in before he even had Satana’s six golden labia hoops.
Well, wouldn’t be long now. Soon he would have Satana, and after they grabbed her he would have the golden hoops. With those hoops, Wolf figured he’d be in for a huge power boost. Power, he had plenty of his own, but, now he would merge his force with that of Satana’s voodoo cunt. Get his fuckin mojo working for real.
Waiting for her in the parking lot wasn’t the problem. Problem was Ray Bob and his endless questions.
“Hey, Wolf? Why don’t we shine this waiting? I mean, we can go to K-Mart tomorrow, shit, we can find a 24 hour Save On, get you some brand new fuckin ear rings. Right now. Fuck this bitch.”
“That’s what we’re gonna do.”
“Find a place to buy you some ear rings?”
“No asshole. Fuck this bitch.”
“Huh?”
“Pay attention, dipshit. Fuck this bitch. That’s what we’re gonna do. She comes out, we grab her. After we fuck her, I’m gonna make her take them rings off her pussy and personally put em in the holes you just made.”
“Be a tad messy, won’t it?”
Wolf blinked, “You got a point. First, she’ll put my rings in. Next, I’ll fuck her. Then, you can fuck her.”
“Wolf?”
“What?”
“We gonna grab us a dancer, I’d rather we took one of the young ones. You know, one with great big titties.”
“Ray Bob, them titties is all fake.”
“Bullshit. How would you know?”
“Trust me. Anytime you see a tit stickin’ straight out, like a big ol’ football? Fake.”
“Who gives a fuck? I like football.”
“Ray Bob, it’s a mystical thing. That Satana, she’s got power in that devil cunt, and I aim to tap into it. Transfer it, mingle it with mine. High charge my batteries. Renew my force.”
“How you plan to do that?”
“Grabbing her, against her will. There’s power in that. Then fucking her. Forcing her. More power.”
“Forcing her. Hell, Wolf. Give that old skank ten bucks; she’d probably fuck our brains out, both of us.”
“Sure. I reckon $9.99 would cover my end of the bill. What’s left, penny? Well, that ought to handle her work on you.”
“I don’t get it.”
“No, you don’t. Look, it ain’t fuckin the bitch. It’s forcing her: To go with us. To fuck us. Making her take each and every one of them hoops out,
and put them in my piercings. Power, power, power. Of course them rings, they’re special. Got a power all their own, magic, I felt it.”
Ray Bob frowned, “We are gonna kill her, right?”
“Bet your ass.”
“Well, if that old whore’s snatch is so full of power, you sure we can manage that?”
“I sure hope you ain’t smart mouthing me Ray Bob.”
“I wouldn’t do that Wolf. It’s just you got me thinkin bout that bitch, her weird pussy an all, and I do believe there’s something could be dangerous in all this.”
“See? Now, that’s what it means to use your head, think. Good. Check the cylinder on your revolver. Making sure your piece is ready, that ought to put you at ease. Now, do it, because I do believe that’s our girl just came out the door.”
Chapter Thirteen
It was true. Patience was a virtue. A virtue that hadn’t come easily to the Widowmaker. Still, he had nurtured its development painstakingly. His calling demanded it, to the ‘enth’ degree. He was an avenger. A righter of wrongs. One who envisioned a long career stretched out in front of him. He wasn’t some short term jerk-off destined to take a big fall due to his impetuosity. Martyrdom wasn’t part of the plan.
He’d spent a good part of the night waiting. All comes to he who waits. He wouldn’t argue with that. Not after tonight. Two hours he’d spent, sitting in the parking lot behind JuicyTown. Waiting for a fat prick name of Vito. Turned out to be time well spent.
It was a long wait, but certainly not a boring one. JuicyTown’s women saw to that. Parked in the huge lot’s furthest corner, backed by the foliage of the riverbed, the Widowmaker had good position to observe without being observed. He sat hunkered down, smoking, watching from his vehicle. The show, provided by JuicyTown dancers moonlighting as hookers, (or were they hookers moonlighting as dancers? He wasn’t clear on that.) was entertaining, though somewhat repetitious.
He watched the women as they exited the club through the back door. Trick in tow, they would weave their way through an assortment of vehicles as diverse as the customers who’d arrived in them. On reaching their designated vehicle, hooker and john would waste no time in gaining entry. Pursuit of idle amusement found the Widowmaker noting the time lapsed between the moment a woman’s head would disappear beneath the window-line, and the moment when it would surface. On average, four minutes. Talent will out.