This Wicked World

by RICHARD LANGE

  22

  BOONE’S ALARM GOES OFF AT SIX. HE SHOWERS AND GETS dressed, then crosses the courtyard to Amy’s bungalow to catch her before she leaves for work. He knocks, waits, and knocks again. No response.

  Her car isn’t parked out front either. He walks Joto all the way down to Franklin to be sure. So she must have left for school already. He wonders if she’s avoiding him. If she gives him a chance to explain what’s been going on, he’s sure he can make her understand why he lied to her. He’s off tonight. Maybe she’ll let him take her to dinner.

  He tests his sore arm as he watches Joto sniff something in the gutter. It feels pretty good this morning. He can lift it over his head without wincing. The day is warming up quickly, and the palm trees shy away from a hot, dry wind that makes it difficult for the birds to get where they’re trying to go. A frond torn loose by a powerful gust sails through the air and lands in the middle of the street.

  Back at the bungalow, Boone lies down on the couch with the newspaper and falls back asleep until nine. He gets up and feeds Joto, then pulls his phone off the charger, thinking he’ll try to call Amy. As soon as the phone powers up, though, it chirps to signal that he has a message from her.

  Boone pushes the button and can’t believe what he hears.

  It’s Olivia, saying something about a photo, the cops, people watching him. He brings up the picture: Amy, bound hand and foot, a stunned expression on her face.

  Jesus. Fuck. This is insane. Boone closes his eyes and waits for his initial panic to subside before calling Amy’s phone.

  Olivia answers. “About fucking time.”

  “Where is she?” Boone says.

  “Staring at the business end of a shotgun,” Olivia replies. “If you want to see her again, be at Hollywood and Highland in half an hour, at the entrance to the subway station.”

  “Wait. Hold on.”

  “That’s all for now, except that my people better not see anybody who even smells like a cop within a hundred yards of you. But you’re smart enough to know that, right?”

  “Listen,” Boone says. “Bring Amy along. You can take me instead.”

  Olivia chuckles. “Not gonna happen,” she says.

  “At least put her on for a second; let me talk to her.”

  “Fuck you, man. Half an hour,” Olivia snaps, then ends the call.

  BOONE MAKES IT to the meeting place in fifteen minutes, the mall at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. A Gap, a Coach store, Hot Topic, and restaurants catering to the tourists who come to see the stars’ hand-and footprints at Grauman’s Chinese Theater next door.

  The subway station is located a couple of stories beneath the mall. Boone plants himself at the top of the escalators and scrutinizes every passing face. Throngs of tourists wander around like they’re lost. They’ve seen the footprints and the sidewalk stars, posed with the hustlers dressed as Batman and SpongeBob, and now they’re wondering what else there is to do. Boone feels like the world has taken a sickening tilt. He wants to shout a warning at them.

  An ambulance races past, siren going full-bore. Boone checks his watch and finds that two minutes have gone by since he last looked. He crosses his arms and uncrosses them, about to come out of his skin. A bum asks for a dollar and scoffs at his curt refusal.

  Olivia materializes out of the crowd. She’s wearing big black sunglasses and a little green dress.

  “Hey, sailor,” she coos.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” Boone says.

  “All kinds of fun stuff. Let’s take a walk.”

  She was smart to meet in public. If they were anywhere else, Boone would take her down right now and start breaking things until she told him where Amy was. They head west, toward the theater.

  “First off,” Olivia says, “your girlfriend’s fine.”

  “Let her go,” Boone says. “Whatever this is, it’s stupid to involve her. I barely know her.”

  “Really?” Olivia says sarcastically. “Okay, let me make a quick call.”

  One slap, Boone thinks. Just to wipe the smirk off her face.

  “If you hurt her…” he begins.

  “Let’s get past this part,” Olivia says. “If I hurt her, you’ll fuck me up or hunt me down or whatever. I know you’re the king of the badasses. That’s why you’re here. I need a badass.”

  Boone grabs her arm, yanks her to a stop. “I mean it,” he says. His reflection glowers back at him from her sunglasses.

  Olivia’s smugness disappears, replaced by sudden rage. She pulls away from Boone and holds up a phone. “In about three minutes this is going to ring,” she says. “Touch me again, and I’m going to tell my friend on the other end to kill your girl.”

  He could call her bluff, but it’s too risky. The bitch is crazy — her and her brother. A couple of mean dogs who’ve jumped the fence and can’t figure out who to bite first. He raises his hands in surrender, and they start walking again, detouring around a woman taking a picture of a teddy bear sitting on Jackie Chan’s star.

  “How do I get her back?” Boone asks.

  “You’re going to help me on something, a job I planned,” Olivia replies. “If you do your part right, hooray for our team. If you blow it, think about going back to prison. Or worse. Think about you dying, or your girl, or both of you.”

  They’ve reached the theater. The forecourt is packed with tourists who occasionally drop to their knees to place their hands in the impressions left in the concrete by the hands of Marilyn Monroe or Tom Cruise. Olivia watches the ritual with a superior smile twisting her lips.

  “What kind of job?” Boone asks.

  “Tomorrow Bill is meeting some Mexicans in a ghost town out in the desert,” Olivia says. “He’ll have one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash, and the Mexicans will have a million in counterfeit hundreds. Both groups will have been searched beforehand to make sure nobody’s carrying weapons. You’re going to be there too, you and your crew, hiding somewhere nearby with lots of guns.

  “Right when Bill and the Mexicans are about to make the exchange, you’ll pop out and jack them for the real money and the fake shit, fucking over everybody all at once. Then you’ll get the hell out of there, and me and you will hook up later. You’ll hand me the take, and I’ll hand you your girlfriend and twenty thousand dollars.”

  Boone goes cold. He’s got to think fast, talk Olivia out of this madness.

  “That’s great and all,” he says, “but can I point out a few problems?”

  “No,” Olivia snaps.

  “First, the crew you mentioned? I don’t have one.”

  “Put one together.”

  “And I don’t have any guns either.”

  “You’re in L.A., dude. Guns grow on trees.”

  “Okay, this ghost town. Where exactly is it? What’s it called? I need to know these things.”

  “How much longer are we gonna go on like this?” Olivia says with a sigh. “It’s in the Mojave Reserve or Preserve or something like that. I’m going back to Bill’s today to get all the details, and I’ll call you with them later.”

  “Last I saw, you and Bill were pretty much on the outs,” Boone says. “Something changed since then?”

  “I’m done with you,” Olivia says.

  Boone winces with frustration, pauses for a moment to regain control of his voice, then says, “Olivia, listen to what I’m telling you. This is way over your head, and way over mine. I was a bodyguard, not a robber. You picked the wrong guy.”

  Olivia glares at him, anger flushing her cheeks. “Okay, you know what?” she says. “You might as well shut up now, because nothing you say is going to change this. You’ve got two choices: Do as you’re told, and Miss Amy lives. Don’t do as you’re told, and she dies. Real simple.”

  “Tomorrow is too soon,” Boone says.

  “I’ve got no control over that. Better get to stepping.”

  “Olivia, please.”

  The girl turns and walks away. Boon
e thinks about following her, but that would be a mistake if she’s actually smart enough to have someone watching him. A fresh load of tourists streams off a bus, and Boone loses her in the mess. His heart is banging a mile a minute, but his mind is strangely calm as he jogs across Hollywood Boulevard against the light to reach his car, ignoring the honks and shouted curses. It’s blood-and-guts time now, and there’ll be no stopping until Amy is safe.

  BOONE CALLS ROBO when he gets back to the Olds.

  Robo answers with a sharp “Dígame.”

  “It’s Jimmy,” Boone says. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Not on the phone, in person. Can we meet somewhere?”

  “What do you mean? I’ll be at work tomorrow.”

  Boone touches the bandage on his forehead. “This can’t wait that long,” he says.

  “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m watching the kids right now. My old lady’s out shopping with her sister.”

  “I’ll come there then.”

  Boone hears children in the background on Robo’s end. Robo lowers his voice and says, “It’s barely ten in the morning, bro. What the fuck’s going on?”

  “I want to talk to you about a job.”

  “One of them kind that can’t wait?”

  “One of them kind that pays real well. Come on and give me your address.”

  HALF AN HOUR later Boone pulls up in front of a two-story duplex deep in Van Nuys. Robo’s family occupies the bottom unit. The building’s yellow stucco is cracked and flaking, and the windows are covered with iron security bars. Boone steps over a tricycle on his way to the front door. Other toys are scattered across the dead grass in the yard.

  The door of Robo’s unit is open, so Boone sticks his head inside. Robo, dressed in a T-shirt and sweatpants, is passing out bananas to a pack of rambunctious kids and shouting to be heard over the cartoon on the TV.

  “Hey, mijo! Don’t be so grabby,” he says to one of the boys.

  “Junior took my baby,” a little girl wails.

  “What you want with a doll?” Robo asks Junior, a chubby five-year-old. “You’re a boy. Give it back.”

  “Hey,” Boone calls out.

  “Hey, ese,” Robo says, raising a hand. “Hold on a minute. I’ll be right there.”

  The kids all turn to look at Boone with big brown eyes and quizzical expressions. He takes in the wall of family photos, the well-worn furniture, the fresh roses in a vase on the dining-room table and knows he shouldn’t be coming to Robo with a thing like this. It’s a lot hairier than the guy’s usual snooping and strong-arming.

  But then he flashes back on the picture of Amy that Olivia sent, the fear and confusion in her face. If Robo says no, he says no, but Boone has to ask. He moves outside to wait on the porch while the fat man settles the children in front of the TV.

  Robo joins him a few seconds later, shouting over his shoulder, “Stop banging that candle! Now!” Sweat shines on his face and neck.

  “Damn, man, how many kids you got?” Boone says.

  Robo passes him a can of Budweiser. “That’s my sister-in-law’s too. A whole fucking circus.”

  He pops open his beer and leads Boone to a wrought-iron table and chairs set up in a shady spot in the yard. Boone takes a seat and watches a couple of vatos pedal past on lowrider bicycles.

  “So what you got for me?” Robo asks.

  Boone starts talking without a solid pitch. A mistake, probably, but time’s short. He leaves out Amy and Olivia — too much to go into right now — and plays it instead that he heard about the meeting between Taggert and the Mexicans from a prison buddy looking to hire anonymous gunmen to ride out to the desert and rob the businessmen on both sides of the deal.

  Robo shakes his head when Boone tells him his cut will be ten thousand dollars. “Damn, ese!” he says. “What happened to you? A week ago I could barely get you to come with me to push a couple wetbacks around, and now you’re talking about robbing motherfuckers.”

  “Shit changes,” Boone says with a shrug. “You interested?”

  Robo sips his beer and scratches his belly. “That’s some straight-up thugging,” he says. “Been a long time since I got into something like that.”

  “You asked me to find you jobs that pay,” Boone says, then jerks his head toward the duplex. “I understand if you’re not into it, though, the family and all.”

  “Fuck, man,” Robo exclaims. He slouches in his chair and holds his head in both hands.

  A panel truck sidles up to the curb, and the driver sounds a horn that plays “La Cucaracha.” He jumps out, hurries to the back, and slides open the door to reveal crates of battered vegetables and a small selection of packaged goods: cooking oil, tortillas, sacks of rice and beans. A few housewives drift over from the complex across the street, the one that looks more like a prison than apartments, and gather around the rolling grocery store.

  “Remember how I told you George needs an operation on his eyes?” Robo says.

  “At Denny’s the other day, sure,” Boone replies.

  “Yeah, well, now they’re saying it has to be done soon, before he gets much bigger.”

  “That’s rough,” Boone says.

  “I work my ass off, you know. Fuck.”

  Boone reaches down and picks up a Matchbox car off the grass to avoid looking Robo in the eye. If he does, he’s going to tell him to forget it, he’ll find someone else.

  “My share’s ten grand?” Robo says.

  Boone turns the car over in his hands, a Mustang. “That’s what the man’s promising.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “We’ll leave this afternoon to make sure we’re set up.”

  Robo goes silent and squints off into space like he’s in pain. Boone watches a ratty-looking squirrel scamper down an avocado tree in short, startlingly quick bursts. When it reaches the ground, it paws at the dirt, searching for something it buried earlier.

  “Dad!” a little girl calls from the porch.

  “What?” Robo responds, without turning around.

  “George spilled some water.”

  “So clean it up.”

  The girl gives a frustrated moan and steps back inside. A second later every kid in the apartment is screaming.

  Robo drains his beer, belches, and hurls the can at the squirrel, which races back up the tree.

  “Okay, I’m in,” he says, holding out his fist.

  Boone pounds it and says, “You sure?”

  “No, but don’t worry,” Robo replies.

  “We’re gonna need guns,” Boone says.

  “What kind?”

  “Big as you can borrow. We want to look like the baddest motherfuckers walking. AKs, AR-15s — like that.”

  Robo grimaces. “That’s short notice, dog.”

  “I know, man, I know,” Boone replies.

  “You’re lucky I got the friends I got.”

  The girl reappears in the doorway and yells, “Dad!”

  Robo stands with a grunt. “I’m gonna go whip some little asses,” he says. “And you better split before my wife gets home. I don’t need to be answering all kinds of questions about what that white boy wanted.”

  “Thanks, Robo,” Boone says.

  “I should be thanking you, right?” Robo says as he waddles toward the duplex. “You’re the dude who hired me.”

  The women shopping at the vegetable truck steal leery glances at Boone as he walks out to his car. Once behind the wheel he shuts his eyes and takes a second to process everything. A little bit of doubt tickles his brain, a little bit of “This is happening too fast,” but he pushes it aside and slips the Olds into drive.

  OLIVIA SWEEPS THROUGH the front door all amped because her plan is in motion, but Virgil doesn’t acknowledge her, doesn’t even turn away from the TV. This whole thing has him so stressed, he took what he thought was a Xanax from Eton’s stash, and now everything’s kinda off, kinda wavy, and he’s wondering if it might have been something s
tronger.

  “How’s our girl?” Olivia says as she plops down beside him on the couch.

  “Fine, I guess,” he says. “I took her some cereal a while ago.”

  “You got to keep a good eye on her, like every fifteen minutes.”

  Virgil ignores her, stares at the TV.

  “I mean it,” she says.

  Definitely stronger than Xanax. Judge Judy has green dots all over her face. “How’d it go with what’s-his-nuts?” he asks, hoping to switch Olivia to another subject.

  She sits back and puts her feet on the coffee table. “He threatened me and shit when I told him we had his chick, but I let him know we weren’t fucking around,” she says.

  “That’s cool.”

  “The next thing I’ve got to do is call Bill and get back in good with him.”

  “How you gonna do that?” Virgil says.

  Olivia leans forward to scratch her knee. “The guy’s crazy about me. Like, really crazy,” she says. “If everything’s cool after I talk to him, I’ll leave in an hour for the ranch, find out what I need to know, then come back here as soon as they take off for the meet. Tomorrow afternoon we’ll swap the bitch for the money, and it’s ‘See ya, motherfuckers.’ ”

  “Be careful,” Virgil says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He could get you out there just to shoot you.”

  Olivia is quiet for a second, staring at the TV. “You don’t suppose I know that?” she finally says.

  Virgil closes his eyes and thinks, Where you gonna go?

  “What?” Olivia says, and Virgil realizes he must have spoken out loud.

  “Where you gonna go?” he repeats, louder.

  “What do you mean?” Olivia snaps. “The ranch, you idiot.”

  “No, after, with your share.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Costa Rica. A girl I know said it was superchill down there, supernice.”

  “Need a passport,” Virgil says. His head is suddenly too heavy for his neck.

  Olivia leans forward to look into his face. “What the fuck are you on?” she says.