This Wicked World

by RICHARD LANGE

  “You mean my doctor’s appointment?” Spiller says. “Yeah, I am.”

  “Good, because I have a thing for you two. Some junky defaulted on a loan, and now I get his house. You guys are going to go over and help him move.”

  “We don’t have to stop at U-Haul or anything, do we?” Spiller asks.

  “Nope, the furniture’s mine too,” Taggert replies. “Just put his ass out on the street.”

  “Okeydokey, boss.”

  Spiller writes the directions Taggert gives him on a parking stub, then hangs up.

  “We’re going to Echo Park, over by Dodger Stadium,” he tells T.K. “Gotta toss some doper out of his house. Maybe you can use the Sledgehammer on him.”

  T.K. is back to being above it all. He raises his hand to indicate that he’s about done with this subject and says, “Laugh now, motherfucker, but wait till the DVD comes out.”

  “Oh, now you’ve got a DVD too?”

  “I met a producer down at the club who did videos for Busta and DMX, all those cats, and he’s going to hook me up. It’s going to be bigger than Tae Bo.”

  It cracks Spiller up how every nigger in L.A. is one miracle away from being a millionaire. He lights another Camel. They’re stopped at a red light, and a little kid in the backseat of the car in the next lane is making goofy faces, staring at his reflection in the Explorer’s tinted glass. Spiller thinks how he could put a bullet right through the brat’s eye from here, open a fist-size hole in the back of his head, and spatter his brains all over everyone else in the car, really freak their asses out.

  BOONE LETS HIMSELF into Amy Vitello’s bungalow and walks back to the bedroom. He sets his red plastic toolbox on the floor and takes out a hammer and screwdriver. A few taps and a little prying, and he’s able to remove the wooden stops from the window frame in one piece. The sash lifts out easily after that.

  As he suspected, the wire that raises the sash is tangled on its spool. Luckily, he bought a few extra replacement units the last time a tenant had this problem, so he doesn’t have to make a trip to Home Depot.

  He removes the old spool from the frame, puts in a new one, attaches the wire to the sash, and reseats it. In less than half an hour the window slides up and down smoothly again.

  On his way out Boone notices a collection of framed photos on Amy’s dresser. Even though he’s pretty sure it’s crossing the tenant/property-manager line, he pauses to look them over.

  There’s an old black-and-white with scalloped edges, probably Grandma and Grandpa, and a color one of a naked baby on a blanket, probably Amy. Everybody’s smiling in the family portrait. Mom, Dad, a couple of brothers, a couple of sisters. It’s easy to pick out Amy. She’s ten or eleven, cute even in braces. There she is in a graduation gown; there she is in front of the Eiffel Tower; and — what’s this? — there she is in a police uniform, LAPD, an official portrait.

  Damn! It figures that the first woman he’s had eyes for since getting out of prison is a cop. At least he found out now, before he did anything stupid. It’s not like he was planning to make any big moves on her anyway. Let’s be realistic: He’s an ex-con surviving on tips and charity, a man who’s blown every chance he’s been given, whose life seems to be moving backward instead of forward. Now is not the time to be chasing a girl like Amy. He’s got to hunker down and stick to the basics, like he did after Lila left him. Look what one moment of weakness, agreeing to help Robo out, led to: he’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get his ass shot off tonight.

  In a dark mood, Boone stashes his toolbox in the little shed where he keeps the lawnmower and paint and plumber’s snake and returns to his bungalow. He collects his dirty clothes and shoves them into his old seabag, then sets out on foot for the Laundromat in the minimall a couple blocks away.

  The jacaranda trees are in bloom, and the sidewalk is covered with crushed purple blossoms. An old man pushes a paleta cart down Franklin, the tinkling of its little bell no match for the whoosh and roar of traffic in the street. He looks like Oscar’s grandfather. Boone buys a mango popsicle from him and eats it on the way, his bag balanced on his shoulder.

  At the Laundromat, Boone divides his clothes into two loads, one hot, one cold, whites and everything else. The only other person in the place is a fat homeless man who is standing around in a Hawaiian-print bathing suit while he waits for the rest of his clothes to dry.

  “How you?” he asks Boone.

  “I’m all right.”

  “You see that on the news about those bombs?”

  “Sure did,” Boone says, with no idea what the guy’s talking about.

  “Fucking bombs.”

  “Fucking bombs.”

  The Laundromat’s air-conditioning is on the fritz, and Boone is sweating by the time he gets his washers going. His phone rings. Berkson, his lawyer. He steps outside to take the call, squeezing past the homeless guy’s shopping cart, which is piled high with newspapers and aluminum cans.

  “How’s tricks?” Berkson asks. “The job? The apartment?”

  “Good,” Boone replies. “Everything’s good. Weinberg’s son, the kid who runs the restaurant, is a real tool, but I can deal.”

  “If he’s giving you trouble, I can talk to his father.”

  “Nah, it’s just that I thought my past was going to stay between me, you, and Weinberg.”

  “And so it has,” Berkson says, sounding surprised to hear differently.

  “Well, someone told Simon,” Boone says. “He made a crack about it last night.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Something about how I fucked up as a bodyguard.”

  “Ahh, Jimmy, I’m truly sorry,” Berkson says. “You think you can trust someone. Weinberg promised, but we both know what that’s worth. I’ll talk to him this afternoon.”

  Boone tilts his head back, feels all the little bones in his neck pop. “No, no,” he says. “Let it lie. It’s irritating, but it won’t kill me.”

  “There you go. That’s the right attitude.”

  “I mean, the kid’s right. I did fuck up.”

  “But you had honorable intentions, Jimmy, and that makes all the difference. Always remember that.”

  Boone adjusts his sunglasses and says, “That’s sweet of you, Danny, but I’d rather forget the whole thing.”

  “If you figure out how to do that, let me know,” Berkson replies. “I have a few things that need forgetting too. But, look, I gotta run now. Call me if you need anything.”

  “Will do, buddy.”

  A car alarm goes off, startling Boone and a couple of pigeons tearing into a half-eaten bag of potato chips sitting in the homeless guy’s cart. The owner of the car, an Asian woman, runs out of the nail parlor next door, barefoot, caught in the middle of a pedicure. She aims her remote at the silver Mercedes and thumbs the button repeatedly until the screeching stops.

  Boone steps back into the Laundromat. The homeless man is moving his head in time to a Muzak version of Elton John’s “Daniel,” a dreamy look on his face.

  “How you?” he asks Boone.

  “Not so great.”

  “You see the bombs on the news?”

  Boone checks his watch. Four hours until he’s supposed to pick Robo up at Denny’s and accompany him to Oscar Rosales’s last known address. Four hours to kick himself for looking for trouble again.

  T.K. PARKS IN front of the hulking Craftsman-style house in Echo Park, a couple blocks up from the lake. The place looks to have been neglected for a long time. It slumps defeated in the perpetual shade of two shaggy firs, weighed down by the dusty ivy that covers one wall and is now spreading over the roof like a dark green claw. Most of the windows are boarded up, and the last of the paint is peeling away.

  “Who’d you say we’re putting out?” T.K. asks. “Herman Munster?”

  Spiller shrugs and opens the door of the truck. He reaches into the glove box for his pretty little Hawg 9 and slips it under his belt at the small of his back while T.K. retrieves his gun from between t
he console and the seat.

  “I don’t see why Taggert’s interested in this wreck, unless he’s doing the neighbors a favor,” T.K. says. “You know what a shithole like this does to property values?”

  “Could be a principle thing,” Spiller replies.

  “Principle. Yeah, right.”

  The picket fence surrounding the property is also in bad shape. Most of the slats are missing, and the ones that remain are broken or barely hanging on. The gate lies rotting in the waist-high weeds that have taken over the yard.

  Spiller and T.K. walk up the cracked concrete path to the sagging porch. An orange cat sunning itself there rolls to its feet, glares at the men, then disappears into the bushes. Spiller feels the first step give slightly under his weight, the wood spongy, almost eaten through by termites.

  “See that?” T.K. points the toe of his shoe at the small black pellets scattered among the Thai takeout menus that litter the porch. “Rat shit.”

  Spiller stops in his tracks, the muscles in his legs freezing up. When he was a baby, a rat climbed into his crib and bit him in the face. His mom says it never happened, that he must have dreamed it, but Spiller can still feel the animal’s teeth ripping into his cheek and smell its garbage-dump breath.

  One step. Two. He forces himself to walk to the front door, a scream rattling against the back of his teeth.

  VIRGIL DRAWS HARD on the bong, the water inside bubbling as he fills his lungs with smoke. He feels a cough coming on but holds back, because this is the good shit, the kush, and he doesn’t want to waste a bit of it.

  Eton is sitting in his ornate wood and velvet vampire chair, telling one of his punk rock stories. He looks like a vampire too: tall and thin with dyed black hair hanging to his shoulders, one blue eye and one green, and skin so pale Virgil can see his veins. He’s wearing leather pants and a sleeveless New York Dolls T-shirt. Real old school.

  “We played Randy’s Rodeo in San Antonio, where the Pistols played when they toured in seventy-seven,” Eton says. “These fucking cowboys, a whole gang of drunk shit-kickers, were waiting for us in the parking lot afterward, wanted to beat our asses. Black Ron, our drummer — he was a real big boy — pulled a machete out of his road case and chased them off, screaming like some kind of funky… funky… rhino on crack. Hey, did you ever see Jacob’s Ladder? Now that’s a trippy fucking flick.”

  Eton Dogfood. That’s his punk name. Virgil doesn’t know his real one. He played bass in The Despised back in the eighties, a hard-core band that made it onto a few compilations but never put out their own CD. Now he deals all kinds of dope, and DJs at clubs and private parties.

  Eton inherited this crazy old house from his grandma. In fact, her room upstairs is exactly as it was on the day she died.

  He took Virgil up to see it once, all the dusty old lady stuff still on the dresser, her robe laid out on the bed, a closet full of shoes. Fucking freaky shit.

  The whole place is freaky. The windows that haven’t been boarded over are covered with thick velvet drapes that keep the rooms dark all day, but not so dark that you can’t make out the peeling wallpaper and the water stains on the ceiling. There are candles everywhere, and paintings in heavy frames: men in armor, angels, hunting scenes. And the smell. Virgil once explored an abandoned gold mine with his dad, and the house smells exactly like it, like bat piss and dirt and rotting wood.

  Virgil exhales a cloud of pungent smoke, passes the bong to Eton, and settles back on the couch, which matches Eton’s chair.

  Virgil’s older sister, Olivia, met Eton at a club in Hollywood where he was spinning records when she first moved out from Tampa years ago. They became good friends, and she ended up moving into this house for a while, cooking, doing dishes, and making dope deliveries to earn her keep. “Olivia is like a little sister to me,” Eton told Virgil. “A little sister with a really great ass.”

  When Virgil rolled into town a month ago and needed a place to crash, Olivia called Eton from wherever the hell she’s living now, the desert or wherever, and arranged for him to stay at the house. At first Virgil was creeped out by the whole scene — the cobwebs, the rustling in the walls at night. He also thought that Eton might be gay and worried that he’d try to get with him. But everything turned out cool.

  The best part was how generous Eton was with his stash, even fronting Virgil some stuff so he could earn a little money. Virgil started hitting the clubs and moving product, and things had been going pretty good. He’d built up a little bank and was able to get high whenever he wanted. Until last night.

  “Where were you again when you got ripped off?” Eton asks for the third time.

  Virgil rubs his shaved head and feels his scalp move under his fingers. That kush is some sick smoke fo sho, he thinks.

  “Some yuppie place on Hollywood Boulevard. Had all these clocks everywhere. The Tick Tock or some shit.”

  “And you’re sure they were cops?”

  “Alls I know is two big motherfuckers came up with badges, saying they were police and that they wanted to talk. They didn’t look like no police to me, though, so I knocked one of them on his ass and was about out the door when the other one stuck a gun in my ear. They dragged me out to the alley behind the restaurant and jacked me for all the dope I had and all my money too.” The money part’s the biggest lie — he’s still got over a hundred bucks — but what the fuck.

  “I slid you three hundred dollars’ worth of shit,” Eton says.

  “I know, bro, and I feel really bad about that,” Virgil says. “But I’m gonna repay you, I swear. If I gotta go out and rob a bank, I swear to God I will. ’Cause you trusted me, and that’s a serious fucking thing.”

  Eton stares at Virgil with those weird different-colored eyes of his, and Virgil wonders if he’s finally going to go off on him for losing the drugs, but the guy just smiles and says, “Man, I gotta get out of this town.” He reaches for the two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi on the coffee table and refills his big green plastic glass. “Don’t ever try heroin, okay?” he says after taking a sip. “Promise me that.”

  “I promise,” Virgil says, once again not knowing where the hell dude is coming from or how he got there.

  There’s a knock at the front door.

  Eton leans forward in his chair and cocks his head. “Am I expecting customers?” he asks himself. “What day is today?”

  “Friday,” Virgil says.

  Eton stands and walks to the door, glass in hand. “Yeah,” he calls out after pressing his ear to the thick wood.

  “Open the fucking door. Delivery from Taggert.”

  Taggert. Virgil has heard that name before. Eton turns to him with a scared look on his face. “Dude,” he whispers, “there’s a…” but is interrupted by more knocking.

  “Fuck,” Eton says. He twists the deadbolt, and whoever is on the other side pushes the door open, knocking him off balance, and spilling his Pepsi. Virgil watches from the couch as two men step inside and slam the door shut. The whole house shakes. There’s a big black one with Chinese eyes and a little white one with a ponytail and a bandage on his neck. Both are carrying guns.

  “Are you the owner?” the black guy asks Eton.

  “This is my house,” Eton replies.

  “Remember the money you borrowed from Taggert?”

  Eton tugs on the neck of his T-shirt. “A friend set something up when I needed a little help, yeah,” he says.

  “When’d you pay him back?”

  “I’ve been…”

  “You didn’t pay him back,” the white guy yells. “That’s the answer to that one.”

  Eton sidles away from the men, says, “You know what, you’re really freaking me out.”

  “Hold it right there,” the black guy says, extending his arm and pointing his gun at Eton’s head.

  Eton puts his hands up. “Relax, bro,” he says as he lowers himself into his chair.

  Virgil bounces one knee and chews on a knuckle. He wants to tell these guys he doesn�
�t know anything about anything and split before any shit goes down, but he’s too afraid to speak up.

  There’s a crash in the kitchen, a dirty pot settling in the sink, and the white guy flinches, snaps his gun toward the sound. He’s breathing funny and sweating like he just ran a mile.

  “What’s that?” he asks sharply. “Who’s back there?”

  “There’s nobody else,” Eton says.

  “Probably a fucking rat, huh?”

  “I don’t know, man. Maybe. Now, look…”

  “You look,” the black guy says, taking a sudden step into the living room. “You’ve got five minutes to pack a bag. Taggert’s tired of your excuses. He’s foreclosing on this place.”

  “You too, twink,” the white guy says to Virgil. “Hit the road.”

  “Wait,” Eton says, his voice strangled into a pathetic whine. “Let me call my friend Olivia. You know her, right? She’ll straighten this out.”

  Oh, yeah. Now Virgil remembers. Taggert is Olivia’s boyfriend out there in the desert. She mentioned him on the phone once. Virgil is so nervous, though, he can’t decide if this is good or bad for him.

  “Nope. No calls, no bullshit,” the black guy says. “Everything’s been said and done.”

  The white guy darts over to Eton and jabs him in the chest with the barrel of his gun. “Pack! Your! Fucking! Bags!” he yells.

  There’s another noise, the old house popping in the heat like it sometimes does. The white guy backs off and looks up at the ceiling with bulging eyes, like he’s afraid something might drop on him.

  “This isn’t happening like this,” Eton says. “Not to my nana’s house.” He stands, a chrome revolver clutched in his fist.

  “Gun!” the black guy shouts.

  He and the white guy open fire, the muzzle flashes shockingly bright in the dark room; the noise painful, each explosion like a hammer blow to Virgil’s chest. Eton flops back into the chair with part of his skull blown away. Blood gushes black from half a dozen holes in his body. His mouth opens once, twice, gulping, desperate, and then his head slumps forward, and he’s dead, dead, dead.