One More Body

by Josh Stallings

  About . . . anything.

  CHAPTER 9

  In the room, I found Angel curled up with Rollens, both fast asleep, both snoring. I lay down on the other bed, crunched my Vicodin and chased them with a Mickey’s Big Mouth. Trash beer, but the best I deserved. I didn’t fall asleep, I passed out.

  MIKAYLA IS LEANING against a dented old Ford truck. Dust swirls around her. The blood from the bullet hole in her heart has dried to rusty brown.

  “No mercy asked, none given,” she says.

  “I’m sorry I got you killed.”

  “You are the only partner I ever had.” She smiles, looking off to the horizon. A river of blood flows between us. Blood laps at her feet. She is sinking down into it. It reaches her knees. I can’t reach her.

  “Moses?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We are her only hope.”

  “Whose? Whose only hope?”

  “All of them. Every last one. Every . . . last . . .”

  Blood crests over her mouth drowning out her words, and then she is gone. I look down and my feet are sinking into the blood river. I struggle but the bloody quicksand has me. The blood is warm. It is sucking me under. I can’t breathe. I scream but my mouth fills with blood. I am dying. I want to live. I choke and cough.

  I AM GASPING when my eyes open. The sweat-soaked sheet is wrapped around my throat. I free myself and sit up. Rollens and Angel are staring at me.

  “Rough night?” Her eyebrow is cocked.

  “Ummm.” I take three Vicodin with the warm, flat beer. I step into the shower and blood rolls down from my hands and arms. I remember the pimp I tortured. The night is a bit blurry, but I clearly remember his scream as the bullet took off a chunk of his ear. I knew I should care. Also knew I didn’t give a fuck. I was rolling hard on the murder mile. Once I found Freedom I would sit back, maybe cry over what I’d done . . . maybe not. Anger and fear was all that might keep that little girl alive. I didn’t have room in my head for one more lost kid. No more room.

  The towel was old and took off some skin. No Downy softness in the Shamrock. Dried and dressed, I took Angel for a walk down Highland. I bought a couple of tall boys from an unlicensed taco shack. In De Longpre Park we joined the other burnouts on the benches. The combination of my red, hard eyes and Angel’s size kept them from saying shit to us. Angel ate carne asada while I gulped the Olde English. I was on the second beer before my head stopped roaring.

  Angel rested her head on my lap. The wrinkles around her eyes gave her a sad, soulful look. “I know, I promised you a life on the beach. You’ll get there, this is just a detour.” I knew I might be lying, but that didn’t mean I didn’t mean it.

  “TITAN? A BLACK, Valley pimp?” Rollens and I were sitting in Kitchen 24, a hipster version of a coffee shop. The pierced and tatted waitress gave me a wide berth as she set down a pile of eggs, hash browns and bacon. I guess even in my bug-man shades she could still vibe my crazy eyes. After she moved out of earshot, Rollens spoke, low.

  “Does he have her?”

  “She’s not going to be the girl you last saw.”

  “Does he have her?”

  “Yes. I’m just telling you, your niece, the girl you knew, she is gone.”

  “And? So we what? Say it, McGuire . . . say we’re supposed to leave her out there.”

  “Fuck that. I’m going after her. If you come, I’m just warning you.”

  “What has he done to her?”

  “Enough.” I told her where we would look. I asked her to call Vice and see if they had a location on Titan. After stepping outside to make a call she told me he was off their radar. She wanted to know the plan.

  “Find Titan. Kill him. Get your niece out. Problem with any of that, Detective?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  IT WAS EARLY. Titan’s girls would hit the track at dusk, or later. The Vice boys hadn’t ended streetwalking, they’d just sent it into the dark and made it more dangerous for the ladies.

  I needed some normalcy, if only for an hour, so I took Angel to the Silver Lake dog park. Our morning stroll had barely taken the edge off her energy. If Angel didn’t get some real exercise we were going to owe the Shamrock for a new motel room.

  A cold mist was coming down off the hills as I moved Angel through the sally port. Hitting the yard, she burst off, spraying chunks of mud in her wake.

  Helen stood alone, her back to me. She was a sturdy woman of my age. Her hair was cropped tight to her head and she wore a men’s plaid Pendleton against the cold. She didn’t look at me when I walked up to her. She was an old friend, a TV writer, drank too much coffee and the owner of a Rottweiler named Bruiser that Angel adored. She was also one of my only links to the straight world.

  “How are you?”

  “Screw you, Mo. Screw you.”

  “Bruiser looks good.” Out in the mist, Angel broadsided the Rottweiler, knocking him off his feet. He rolled and had her by the throat. They tumbled, all snap and growl. “Amazing they never break the skin.”

  “You walked away, never calling, not even an email, nothing. I thought you were dead. You can’t do that to people, Mo. Not to me.”

  There was nothing to say to that, no way to explain how much better off she was with me gone. Angel and Bruiser reared up like stallions battling, tumbled over, then picked themselves up and ran chasing each other across the yard. Helen and I watched the dogs play in silence.

  Helen looked at me, letting out a long breath. She smiled and shook her head. “You still miss Kelly?”

  “Every goddamn day.” Kelly had been my true friend. She had died ugly and I had put those responsible in the ground.

  “Me, too.”

  “Sorry I worried you.”

  “I know you are.” We let silence hang between us. Comfortable. Angel lit out, charging across the park with Bruiser at her heels. “Angel looks good.”

  “She liked Mexico. We both did. You?”

  “I fell in love. Her name is Jules, she’s my age. I know, don’t faint.” Helen had a history of falling for women too young and often straight. It had never worked out well for her.

  “I’m glad. You deserve someone in your life.”

  “She moved in. I mean, she still has her house but she only goes there to check her mail. I’m happy, Mo, for real. Someone to come home to, to drag me out at night. I feel lucky, finally.”

  “She’s lucky to have you.” I looked from the dogs to where the Mercedes was parked. Rollens sat watching us, talking on her cell.

  “You got to go.” Helen followed my gaze to the car and back. On her tiptoes, she pulled off my bug glasses and looked into my eyes for a long moment. “You’re in more shit, aren’t you, Mo?”

  “No, I’m good.” I replaced the shades.

  “Yes, you are, you just don’t know it.”

  “Yeah, I’ll see you around, darlin’.” I snapped my fingers and called Angel. She tore herself away from the battle and followed me out of the park. Helen called Bruiser over. She stroked his face, but her eyes stayed on me. She knew I was full of shit. But maybe she didn’t care.

  CHAPTER 10

  Al Capone’s is a strip and tug joint on Sepulveda Boulevard, down below Victory. It’s a small squat building in the middle of a large parking lot. It looks like it was built in the 1960s then stuck in a time capsule. Despite the Italian name, and the five-foot photos of white dancers on the outer walls, inside the dancers, doorman and bartender were all black. I dropped the twenty cover and pushed through the curtains. The smell: cheap perfume, sweat, desperation, lust, hunger and Windex.

  It was 4:00 a.m. and the Vicodin was taking its toll. I left Rollens and Angel sleeping in the Benz. I’d spent most of the night searching for streetwalkers. If there was a track in the San Fernando Valley, it was invisible. So here I was heading into another strip club. I fell onto the deep velvet couch that horseshoed the room. Pulling out my pint bottle of mescal I took a pull.

  “Don’t let Tia see that.” She
was twenty-two, tops. Skinny but fit.

  “Tia?”

  “The manager. No alcohol with your pussy.” I took a long pull and offered the bottle. She took it from me, licking the opening, eyes locked on mine, tongue darting in and out. “You gay?”

  “How’s that?”

  “Most men see me working a neck like that break a sweat. You didn’t even crack a smile.”

  “Girl, I’m old enough to be your daddy.”

  “But you’re not my daddy, are you?” She traced my hand with her finger. It was callused, rough. She worked at more that stripping. “You want a dance in the VIP room? $150 for fifteen minutes. Guaranteed to make you bust a nut.” She was tired and only half-heartedly selling it. I slid five twenties under her spangled purse. She looked at it, then up at the stage. “Now that is one ugly vagina. That shit is all flapping in the wind.” She was speaking low under the thumping rap. On stage a woman was on her back, shaking her hips out of rhythm to the music, not that the men at the rail noticed. They were transfixed by that three inches of pink flesh.

  “When I get up there, take a look. See, I have a beautiful pussy. That girl needs to get some work done she wants to make the money.” I didn’t have the heart to tell this child that men were so surprised to be staring at a woman’s privates they barely noticed more than their own lust. “What are you doing here, big man? Paying me not to dance on you?”

  “Looking for Titan, you know him?” She looked away, then down.

  “Nope. No, no, no. Never heard of that nigger. Neither did you, you want to see another sunup.” She stood up and walked away.

  In a blurry stream women came and sat beside me. Soon as one would get up another would sit down. Six beauties and a stack of twenties later I walked out, with no more information than when I walked in.

  The sky was paling as I stumbled across the parking lot. I tilted up the mescal, draining it. Something hit the side of my face like a sledgehammer. I fell to my knees. Somewhere on another planet the pint bottle exploded on the pavement.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Who the fuck wants to know about Titan?” He wasn’t large, but the baseball bat he was prodding my face with was. The Vicodin were shielding me from the pain. On the other side of the soft cotton barricade this punk banger swung down. The blow hit my gut. I was spewing before I even felt it coming up.

  “Motherfucker, that shit is disgusting. You mess up my Fendis you dead.” He lifted the bat up. Somehow I knew this blow would ruin my face, I just didn’t care.

  A shotgun was racked and the bat stopped mid-swing. Rollens pressed the gauge against the back of his melon. His eyelids drooped to slits. “Shit, keep it easy. No need to take my head off, I was just talking to this giant motherfucker.”

  “Bat.” Rollens pressed the barrel harder. He dropped it. It hit the pavement with a wooden thunk. I used to play ball in school, before girls and drugs and Beirut. I watched the bat bounce twice, then roll.

  “McGuire?” Her voice was out there calling me. “McGuire? Can you stand?” That was a hell of a question. Rolling over, I sat up. My head was dull and sloshed when I moved it. I wiped the puke onto the arm of my leather jacket. Using the bat as a cane I stood. Legs wobbled. I eye-fucked the young thug. He didn’t flinch. I drove the bat down onto his foot. Bones broke. He started screaming. The second blow hit a kneecap and dropped him.

  “McGuire, enough.”

  “Not by a long shot, but it’ll have to do.” Morning was coming fast. It was time to move, or have the sun find us in a strip club parking lot with a shotgun, a bat and a crippled thug. I dragged him across the parking lot and tossed his squealing ass into the trunk of the Benz. Passed Rollens the keys and fell into the passenger seat.

  “Sepulveda Dam, you know it?” I mumbled, trying not to puke again.

  “Yes. What the fuck was that? I had a gun on him. Are you crazy, fucked up, what?”

  “Drive.” I sank down in the seat.

  “If you have a concussion you need to stay . . .”

  I was out before she finished speaking.

  TIRES ON DIRT woke me. We pulled off Burbank and into the Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge. Rollens swung around the locked gate and down a dirt track. Two hundred feet and the city was gone from view. “There.” I pointed to a cutout behind a stand of cottonwood trees.

  “Looks like that hurts.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your cheek.” I felt it. A lump had formed, blood crusted where the bat had split the skin. It should have hurt. Painkillers and booze are wonderful things.

  Puffs of white fluff from the cottonwood danced in the morning light. The moaning had stopped coming from the trunk. I moved around the car, keyed the lock. As the trunk popped open a pistol fired. Flame shot out of the shadows. I fell back, below the trunk line.

  “You didn’t frisk him?” Rollens was kneeling behind the rear fender. Pulling my .45, I pressed it against the metal wall of the trunk and fired. The thug screamed.

  In the backseat, Angel was snarling and snapping at the rear glass.

  “Toss the gun out or I empty the magazine.”

  “Fuck you.” His hand raised up and fired wild. At three feet I couldn’t miss. I aimed at his wrist and squeezed one off. The slug clipped the top of his thumb, taking a bite out of his knuckle. He was squealing again. I popped up and took aim into the trunk. He was holding his hand, the pistol fallen, forgotten.

  “We done, kid?” I asked him.

  “We done.”

  “Then climb out, hands where I can see them.”

  He hobbled out and I spun him and slammed his hands onto the hood. Rollens gave him a rough pat down. She pulled his wallet, reading it. “Jeremy Greene?”

  “Name is Atlas.”

  “Atlas? You couldn’t lift shit, Jeremy.” I leaned against the car. The world was bright, my head was starting to hurt. “I’m way too tired to play take your body parts until you talk.”

  “Mother fuck—you ain’t even ask me no question.”

  “Rollens, I need you to walk. Take Angel down to the river, get her a drink.” She cocked her head, not moving. “As a police officer, you don’t want to see what is about to happen.”

  “All right, he’s all yours.”

  “What the fuck? You goin’? No, no, no. I’ll talk, but the sister stays here.”

  “Go on, Rollens.” She opened the back door and Angel jumped out. Rollens whistled and Angel followed her. Maybe I was wrong about her; Angel was a much better judge of character than me. Jeremy Greene watched her go. His face hardened. He stared at me, cold, ready for whatever was coming. I slipped the .45 into my belt and took out the picture of Freedom. I held it up for him to see.

  “You smoke?” I asked.

  “Fuck? Smoke?”

  “Yeah, you got a cigarette?”

  “No, don’t smoke. You fuckin’ nuts, right? Crazy white man bullshit going on here.”

  “Haven’t smoked in years, but seems a good time to start.” I punched him in the kidney with all the force I could muster. He staggered onto his busted-up leg, it failed and he fell to the ground howling. “See that little girl there?” I slammed the picture into his face with enough force to break his nose. “Titan snatched her off the street. You were there.”

  “Bullshit I was.”

  “You were. You rape her?” I ground my boot down on his ruined foot. It was already swollen and spilling out of the top of his loafer. When he screamed, blood from his nose mixed with his spittle.

  “Never.”

  “Could spend all day taking you apart, still wouldn’t be enough. Where is she?” I took the pressure off his foot and leaned back on the fender of the Benz. Blood pounded in my temples. White puffs danced in the light. The thug was miles away.

  “I don’t know shit,” he said. “I’m bottom street boy. I don’t run with Titan, just do what he say.”

  I closed my eyes, wishing I hadn’t left my Vicodin in the car. “You ever killed a man?”

  “What?�
�

  “Simple question. You did or you didn’t.”

  “No. You gonna kill me?”

  “Sooner or later. You got to pay for what you done to that little girl.”

  “Didn’t do shit, told you that.” I kicked him in the head, but not with much gusto. I was too tired for this crap.

  “I don’t believe you. Where is she?” I raised my boot over his head and prepared to smash his life out.

  “All right! Fuck you. Dial down. I’ll tell you what you wants to know.”

  “You are almost dead, boy. Talk.”

  “He took her. Titan took that girl. Grabbed her off the street. Raped her. I didn’t touch her. Swear to god. Never. Titan did it. Titan has her.”

  “Where.” I kept the boot hovering over him.

  “I’m telling you. Fuck! Ok. Where? Titan gots a massage parlor over on Victory. She too young to work the clubs. Swear I never touched her. Never.”

  He was a liar. I stomped his leg, finishing the job I’d started with the bat. I made sure it would hurt the rest of his life. With every step he would remember what he did to that little girl. I dragged his screaming ass off the road and dumped him in a ditch. I took the cell phone I’d found in his pocket and set it ten feet up the ditch. I figured it would take him a good twenty minutes to get to it. He would call Titan, Titan would come running, and if the girl wasn’t there Titan would be in for the same hard ride as his boy.

  I was sitting in the passenger seat two Vicodin to the good when Rollens showed up. Angel jumped in the back. Leaning her huge wrinkled face over the seat, she licked me with concern. “I’m ok,” I lied to my best, or at least most faithful, friend.

  “What happened to him?” Rollens nodded over at the moaning body in the ditch.

  “Got lucky. He gave up Titan. They have your niece in a tug joint over on Victory.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Drive.”

  “They won’t be open. Did he tell you where they’re holding her? Did he?”

  I pushed open the door, stood, waited for the world to slow down its spinning, then walked over to the ditch. “Where is he keeping her? No fucking around.” I was shouting to be heard over the blood rushing in my head. “Where?” I kicked dirt clods down on top of him. Dust turned to red mud on his streaked face.